/«•*» -• 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS 


SENTENCES 

AND  PARAGRAPHS 


JOHN    DAVIDSON 

Author  of  *  Scaramouch  in  Naxos,' 


fttftXiov  yueya  KOKOV 


NEW  YORK 


DODD,   MEAD  &  CO,   PUBLISHERS. 
1895. 


SKIS 

URC 


CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

I.     Magnanimity      ...         ...  i 

II.     How  to  please  all  a  Man's  Friends    ...  i 

III.  Prolific  Writers 2 

IV.  Science  and  Philosophy — dismissed  in 

a  Sentence  ...         ...        ...         ...  4 

V.     Animals,:    Improvement    of   Human, 

Deterioration  of  Lower    5 

VI.     Musical  Analysis           ...         ...         ...  9 

VII.     Spontaneity         ...         ...         ...         ...  10 

VIII.     Over-indulgence  in  Imaginative  Com- 
position      ...        ...        ...        ...  ii 

IX.     Keats       12 

X.     Tact  and  Principle        ...         ...         ...  13 

XI.    Absurd  Attempt  of  Criticism  ...         ...  13 

XII.     Ibsen's  Plays      14 

XIII.  Adaptability  of  the  True  Cosmopolite  17 

XIV.  No  Time  to  read  Literature 19 

XV.     Want    of    Poetical    Power    a    Great 

Source  of  Verse      21 

XVI.     The  Better  Part 22 

XVII.     English  Historical  Names       22 


vi  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

XVIII.     Ruskin's  Poetry         24 

XIX.     Modern  Troubadours           ...         ...  28 

XX.     Definition  of  Dignity 30 

XXI.     Evolution        ...         ...         ...         ...  30 

XXII.     Definition  of  Logic    ...         ...         ...  30 

XXIII.  "L'EtSdes  Toasts" 31 

XXIV.  A  Sun-gazer  of  Gotham       ...        ...  32 

XXV.     The  Stories  about  the  Wise  Men  of 

Gotham  put  into  a  Connected 

Narrative             ...         ...         ...  33 

XXVI.     Fanny  Burney            42 

XXVII.     Smollett's  "  Regicide "         44 

XXVIII.     The  Finest  Kid         47 

XXIX.    The  Age  of  Poetry 47 

XXX. -I.      Heather  in   Literature.      Emily 

Bronte  and  Lenau        48 

XXXII.    Matter-of-fact  Writing         61 

XXXIII.  Henry  Lemoine,  a  Forgotten  Book- 

seller, Baker,  Satirist,  Novelist, 

&c.            62 

XXXIV.  Advice  of  Worldly  Wiseman  to  his 

Son          71 

XXXV.    Angels' Visits 71 

XXXVI.     Exercise  for  a  Healthy  Mind           ..  71 
XXXVII.-LVIII.       Nietsche's     Philosophy. 

Aphorisms           ...         ...         ...  72 


CONTENTS. 


LIX.     Truth 84 

LX.     The  Advantages  of  Want  of  Method    85 
LXI.-II.     Carlyle's   "Excursion  to  Paris" 

and  "  Wotton  Reinfred  "         ...     88 
LXIII.     Definition  of  the  "New  Journalism"     97 

LXIV.     Anthropomorphism 97 

LXV.    A  Mistake  in  Criticism         98 

LXVI.    The  Age  of  Bovril     100 

LXVII.    Attempts  at  Blank  Verse  in  French     102 

LXVIII.     A  Meredith  Society 103 

LXIX.     Difficulty  of  Thinking          104 

LXX.-I.     "Shop"      ...        ...         ...         ...  105 

LXX1I.     Merlin  and  Vivien     

LXXIII.     William  Hazlitt          

LXXIV.    Publicity         

LXXV.     Literature  a  Trade     

LXXVI.     Three  Kinds  of  Poets 
LXXVII.  -LXXXII.     Fin  de  Siecle 


no 

"3 
116 
118 
1 20 

122 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


THE  first  step  towards  magnanimity  is  to 
perceive  no  lack  of  it  in  others. 


II. 

If  you  praise  a  man  you  please  only  him- 
self. In  order  to  provide  the  greatest 
happiness  for  the  greatest  number,  you 
must  damn  with  faint  praise,  for  then  you 
please  all  a  man's  friends. 

B 


2      SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

III. 

It  has  been  remarked  that  there  is  a 
great  discovery  still  to  be  made  in 
literature — that  of  paying  literary  men  by 
the  quantity  they  do  not  write.  Without 
seeing  altogether  how  proper  estimates 
could  be  drawn  up  of  the  kind  required 
by  this  suggestion,  most  people  have 
doubtless  great  sympathy  with  the  view  of 
literature  it  involves.  Talk  is  not  neces- 
sarily literature,  and  of  the  numerous 
living  novelists  who  have  produced  more 
than  a  dozen  novels  apiece,  what  is  to  be 
said  of  many  of  them  except  that  they 
have  talked  too  much  ?  A  dozen  substan- 
tial three-volume  novels — and  few  modern 
novelists  are  content  with  that  number — 
will  be  found  to  contain  nearly  two 
millions  of  words — more  than  Shakespeare 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.       3 

and  the  Bible  put  together.  Is  it  reason- 
able to  suppose  that  more  than  one  or 
two  writers  in  a  century  can  produce,  not 
two  millions,  but  two  hundred  thousand 
words,  that  can  justly  be  called  literature  ? 
One  would  not  ask  these  prolific  writers  to 
think  of  fame  instead  of  guineas,  but  one 
would  like  to  ask  them  how  it  would  stand 
with  their  interests  as  rational  beings  pro- 
vided with  consciences,  if  they  were  to 
cease  producing  new  matter  for  a  time,  and 
to  employ  themselves  in  taking  what  they 
have  already  written  seriously  to  task.  It 
would  be  a  severe  punishment,  bringing 
with  it  a  rude  awakening,  if  many  of  our 
popular  novelists  were  forced  to  study 
their  own  books  so  as  to  be  able  to  pass 
an  examination  on  their  import  and  style. 


B  2 


4      SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


IV. 

When  the  heart  and  motives  of  con- 
duct are  in  question,  science  may  as 
well  poison  itself  with  its  last  discovery,  and 
philosophy  drown  itself  in  its  tub,  as 
pretend  to  lay  down  the  law. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.       5 

V. 

The  human  animal  has  steadily 
improved,  ridding  itself  as  civilization 
advanced  of  all  monstrous  and  malformed 
races,  such  as  the  one-legged  tribe  with 
mushroom  feet  that  did  for  tents,  the 
headless  men  whose  faces  were  in  their 
chests,  the  people  whose  ears  served  them 
for  Inverness  capes,  the  one-eyed  men, 
the  dog-headed  men,  the  elephant-headed 
men,  the  centaurs,  the  satyrs,  and  the 
sphinxes.  These  long  ago  disappeared  so 
completely  from  the  face  of  the  earth, 
that  if  poets,  historians,  and  draughtsmen 
had  not  made  descriptions  and  drawings 
while  they  were  extant,  at  least  in  memory, 
we  should  have  lost  all  authentic  trace  of 
them ;  even  Africa  can  now  boast  of 
nothing  more  curious  than  a  tribe  of 


6      SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

pigmies,  well  enough  formed,  and  with 
all  their  members.  Perhaps  one  may  be 
allowed  to  confess  to  a  lingering  wish  that 
it  were  still  possible  to  make  the  acquain- 
tance of  some  gentle  lady  centaur  ;  on  the 
whole,  however,  one  is  glad  to  be  rid  of  all 
those  other  unfortunate  miscreations. 
But  the  brute  beasts  have  sadly  degener- 
ated. It  is  not  so  much  that  remarkable 
species  have  become  extinct ;  it  is  the 
lamentable  deterioration  in  those  that 
remain.  The  fox,  for  example — what  a 
beast  he  once  was.  His  craft  is  probably 
as  distinguished  as  ever,  but  his  medicinal 
qualities  seem  all  to  have  faded.  His 
flesh,  his  blood,  his  lungs,  his  liver,  his 
lights,  powdered,  or  baked,  or  boiled,  were 
sovereign  remedies  for  wounds,  and  bruises, 
and  putrefying  sores,  and  all  the  internal 
diseases  flesh  is  heir  to.  Then  the  zebra 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.       ^ 

— he  was  indeed  an  animal.  His  skin, 
half  an  inch  thick,  was  attached  to  his 
body  only  here  and  there,  and  came  down 
to  his  ankles  slashed  and  puffed  like 
trunk-hose.  Some  of  the  cats  were  also 
most  original  quadrupeds ;  one,  of  which 
a  portrait  is  still  extant,  was  a  mere 
articulation  of  Catherine-wheels  and  curly 
crackers.  The  hippopotamus  may  be  a  wise 
beast,  but  it  is  questionable  if  he  still  knows 
how  to  phlebotomise  himself.  But  the 
most  marvellously  transformed  of  all 
animals  is  the  antelope.  This  comparatively 
gentle  and  now  proverbially  timid  creature 
had  formerly  tusks  like  a  boar,  a  horny 
snout,  a  terrible  eye,  the  tail  of  a  lion, 
beards  all  over  his  body,  and  horns  like 
saws  with  which  to  defeat  armies  and  cut 
down  trees;  and  not  half  his  virtues 
were  known  even  to  Suidas.  Of  the 


8      SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

extinct  animals  the  least  to  be  regretted 
are  the  eale,  which  had  swivel  horns  of  a 
cubit  in  length,  and  the  leucrocotta,  whose 
mouth  extended  from  ear  to  ear,  with  one 
continuous  bone  for  teeth,  and  which 
could  imitate  the  human  voice.  The 
bread-fruit  tree  is  doubtless  an  admirable 
contrivance;  but  how  much  better  off 
were  our  forefathers  with  lambs  growing 
in  gourds,  like  natural  pumpkin  pies  ?  We 
may  not  be  sorry  that  the  jaduah,  a  plant 
bearing  a  baby,  no  longer  blossoms, 
although  Philina  would  have  liked  it ; 
but  who  will  not  regret  the  barnacle-geese, 
or  claiks,  as  they  called  them  in  Buchan, 
which  grew  on  trees,  and  were  to  be  had 
for  the  getting  ?  Indeed,  indeed,  sirs, 
the  lower  creation  seems  to  be  going 
backwards. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.      9 


VI. 

It  is  difficult  to  sympathize  with  the 
French  and  German  musical  analysts,  who 
examine  every  note  in  the  scale,  and 
pulverize  every  feeling  and  idea  experienced 
through  the  influence  of  music,  in  order 
to  discover  its  soul :  as  satisfactory  a 
method,  one  would  think,  as  that  of  the 
biologist  of  Gotham,  who  put  a  body 
through  a  mincing-machine  in  hopes  of 
detecting  the  vital  principle. 


10    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

VII. 

Inaccuracy  may  be  voluble,  a  lie  may 
be  glib,  but  neither  can  be  spontaneous. 
Indeed,  it  may  be  said  that  spontaneity  is 
the  vesture  of  veracity,  of  that  veracity 
which  is  clothed  in  mere  accuracy  of 
statement,  as  well  as  of  the  higher  veracity 
of  the  imagination,  which  can  never  be 
invested  in  the  white  light,  the  robe  of 
truth,  but  must  remain  divinely  discon- 
tented in  its  dazzling  raiment,  passionately 
woven  of  many  colours.  And  this  is  no 
grievance.  We  can  best  contemplate 
light  as  it  decks  itself  in  the  green  and 
golden  land,  the  pearl  and  sapphire  sea. 
The  Gothamite  who  stared  all  day  at  the 
sun  to  sharpen  his  eyes  on  the  celes- 
tial grindstone  was  blind  when  evening 
fell. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS,     n 


VIII. 

Like  all  bad  habits,  the  indulgence  in 
unrestrained  imaginative  composition 
soon  tyrannizes  over  the  writer,  be  he 
small  or  great.  In  youth  incontinence  of 
utterance  is  expected,  and  has  marked  the 
earliest  work  of  some  of  the  greatest  men 
of  letters ;  but  it  is  an  unnatural  fury  that 
drives  septuagenarians  into  the  market- 
place with  indiscretions  and  ineptitudes, 
with  thoughts  that  should  be  secret  and 
feelings  that  should  be  shamefaced. 


12    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


IX. 

Setting  aside  his  rapid  progress,  Keats 
is  the  best  illustration  of  the  natural 
development  of  a  poet.  Beginning  and 
ending  his  intemperate  period  with  the  too 
ample  verge  and  room,  the  trailing  fringe 
and  sampler-like  embroidery  of  "  Endy- 
mion,"  he  was  soon  writing  the  most 
perfect  odes  in  the  language ;  he 
elaborated  in  a  few  months  a  style,  the 
like  of  which  greater  men  have  failed 
to  achieve  even  in  half  a  century  of 
uninterrupted  work. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS,     13 


X. 

We  must  carefully  distinguish  between 
the  absence  of  tact  and  the  presence  of 
principle. 


XI. 

Literary  criticism  is  constantly  attempting 
a  very  absurd  thing — the  explanation  of 
passionate  utterance  by  utterance  that  is 
unimpassioned :  it  is  like  trying  to 
paint  a  sunset  in  lamp-black. 


14    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

XII. 

In  Ibsen's  later  plays  we  seem  at  last  to 
be  shown  men  and  women  as  they  are ; 
and  it  is  at  first  more  than  we  can  endure. 
It  sets  the  brain  whirling,  this  array  of 
naked  souls.  Bernick,  Rosmer,  Ellida, 
Mrs.  Alving,  Rebecca,  Hedda,  Lovborg — 
men  and  women,  weak  or  strong,  they  have 
all  to  yield  up  their  secret  to  this  new 
Wizard  of  the  North.  All  Ibsen's  charac- 
ters speak  and  act  as  if  they  were  hypno- 
tized, and  under  their  creator's  imperious 
command  to  reveal  themselves.  There 
never  was  such  a  mirror  held  up  to  nature 
before  :  it  is  too  terrible.  One  cannot 
read  Dickens  after  a  play  of  Ibsen's,  hardly 
even  Thackeray.  Refuge  may  be  found 
in  Scott,  whose  men  and  women  are 
hidden  in  the  trappings  of  romance  ;  or  in 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.,     15 

Shakespeare,  where,  though  souls  are 
sometimes  naked,  they  appear  in  "  the 
light  that  never  was  on  sea  or  land,"  and 
fill  us  with  the  melancholy  we  have  learned 
to  love.  Yet  we  must  return  to  Ibsen 
with  his  remorseless  surgery,  his  remorse- 
less electric  light,  until  we,  too,  have 
grown  strong,  and  learned  to  face  the 
naked,  if  necessary,  the  flayed  and 
bleeding  reality.  It  is  well,  once  in  a 
lifetime,  once  in  an  age,  to  go  down  to  the 
roots  of  things,  to  put  a  thermometer  in 
the  central  fire,  to  grope  about  in  caves 
and  mines,  to  search  the  bottom  of  the 
sea ;  but  the  earth  is  not  a  naked  geologi- 
cal specimen.  It  is  a  place  to  live  on, 
clothed  with  grass  and  forests,  and 
enamelled  with  flowers,  with  the  atmo- 
sphere for  cloak,  and  sun,  moon,  and 
stars  for  lamps.  After  a  volume  of  the 


16    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

later  Ibsen  it  is  refreshing  to  enumerate 
these  commonplaces.  Neither  is  man,  as 
was  long  ago  remarked,  a  naked  animal, 
nor  is  his  soul  unclothed :  even  those  who 
strip  it  of  religion  and  duty  are  ready  with 
another  garment,  if  it  were  only  some 
fantastic  new  protestantism  of  Every  Man 
His  Own  God.  There  is  no  such  thing  as 
naked  reality ;  the  attempt  at  it  in  litera- 
ture is  unreal,  inasmuch  as  it  is  incomplete. 
The  trees  and  flowers  are  as  real  as  the 
soil  from  which  they  spring,  and  the  so- 
called  illusions  with  which  the  soul  clothes 
itself  are  also  a  part  of  reality.  To  see 
the  soul  stripped  of  these,  and  held  out 
like  a  heart  plucked  throbbing  from  a 
living  breast,  is  perhaps  in  our  time  a 
necessary  lesson.  But  once  is  enough. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     17 

XIII. 

There  is  a  little  water-creature  revealed 
by  that  great  thaumaturge,  the  micro- 
scopist,  which  has  two  coats,  and  can  endure 
without  inconvenience  a  dry  heat  up  to 
212°  Fahr.  He  may  lie  for  years  desic- 
cated in  some  out-of-the-way  corner,  but 
as  soon  as  a  drop  of  rain  touches  him  he 
becomes  all  alive,  and  goes  grubbing 
about  among  the  water-plants  in  a  most 
independent  manner.  If  the  sun  should 
suck  him  up  into  a  cloud  he  doesn't  care, 
but  wraps  himself  tightly  in  his  two  coats, 
and  content  and  self-contained,  floats 
between  heaven  and  earth  awaiting  the 
next  episode.  This  enviable  and  almost 
invisible  little  fellow  is  the  counterpart  in 
the  inferior  creation  of  that  species  of  men 
who,  if  they  have  James  Howell's  in- 

c 


18    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

capacity  to  lay  a  large  grasp  on  the  world, 
are  blessed  like  him  with  the  good  humour, 
self-satisfaction,  and  adaptability  of  a  true 
cosmopolite.     Though  such  a  man  may 
"have    many    aspiring    and     airy,   odd 
thoughts,"   and  be   "on  occasion   of   a 
sudden  distemper,  sometimes  a  madman, 
sometimes  a  fool,   sometimes  a  melan- 
choly  odd   fellow,  having    the  humours 
within    that   belong   to   all   three,"  since 
common  sense  is  the  chief  quality  of  his 
mind  he  can  endure  his  flights  of  fancy 
even  to  212°  Fahr. :   and  whether  he  be 
lifted  up  above  the  earth  in  a  glowing 
cloud  of  royal  or  popular  favour,  or  laid 
aside  waiting  for  the  drop  of  rain  that  shall 
swell  him  out  once  more  to   his  portly 
proportions,    he   is   always    patient,   self- 
reliant — knows  himself,  and   knows  the 
world. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     19 

XIV. 

People  complain  nowadays  that  they 
have  no  time  for  literature,  there  are  so 
many  newspapers  to  read,  every  right- 
thinking  person  being  expected  to  know 
daily  the  current  news  of  the  world,  not 
later  in  the  evening  than  the  issue  of  the 
"  extra  special."  It  is  supposed  that  this 
is  quite  a  modern  excuse  for  the  decay  of 
the  reading  of  literature;  and  sighs  are 
deeply  breathed  for  the  time  when 
"  Clarissa  Harlowe "  was  deemed  too 
short,  when  "  Evelina  "  was  voted  brilliant, 
or  when  nobody  found  the  Waverley 
Novels  tiresome.  And  yet,  since  we 
began  to  have  a  prose  literature  this  com- 
plaint has  always  existed.  The  melan- 
choly Butler,  as  far  back  as  1614,  puts  it 
thus,  speaking  of  the  majority:  "if  they 

C    2 


20    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

read  a  book  at  any  time,  'tis  an  English 
chronicle,  'St.  Huon  of  Bordeaux,' 
'Amadas  de  Gaul,'  etc.,  a  play-book  or 
some  pamphlet  of  news."  The  major 
part  of  the  reading  public  has  been  peren- 
nially interested  in  current  events,  and  the 
man  who  says  he  can't  find  time  to  read 
literature  because  it  is  a  social  duty  to  be 
acquainted  with  news,  makes  a  virtue  of 
curiosity,  like  any  Greek  frequenter  of  the 
Areopagus  or  Jacobean  subscriber  to  the 
"  Staple  of  News." 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     21 


XV. 

The  want  of  poetical  power  is  the 
impelling  force  in  the  case  of  most 
versifiers.  They  would  fain  be  poets, 
and  imagine  that  the  best  way  is  to  try  to 
write  poetry,  and  to  publish  what  they 
write.  They  will  never  see  their  mistake. 
Equus  asinus  still  believes  that  the 
possession  of  an  organ  of  noise  is  suffi- 
cient, with  a  little  practice,  to  enable  him 
to  sing  like  a  nightingale. 


22    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

XVI. 

He  who  dares  manfully  to  lounge  and 
take  his  leisure,  no  matter  what  his  calling 
or  what  his  necessity,  often  chooses  the 
better  part. 

XVII. 

It  does  one  good  to  find  that  there  are 
still  Willoughbys  in  Oxfordshire  and 
Bucks,  Beaumonts,  titled  and  untitled, 
in  Yorkshire,  Leicester,  Surrey,  Notts, 
Northumberland,  and  Ferrers  in  Warwick- 
shire; Fanhope  and  Erpingham  are  un- 
known to  "  Walford,"  nor  is  there  now  an 
Earl  of  Oxford,  or  a  Duke  of  Gloster. 
But  a  Howard  is  Earl  of  Suffolk,  and  Guy 
is  Earl  of  Warwick.  What  though  the 
former  title  now  dates  from  James  I., 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    23 

and  the  latter  from  George  II.  ?  In 
honour  of  the  glorious  names  let  us  say 
the  glorious  verse  : — 

"  Warwick  in  blood  did  wade, 
Oxford  the  foe  invade, 
And  cruel  slaughter  made, 

Still  as  they  ran  up  ; 
Suffolk  his  axe  did  ply, 
Beaumont  and  Willoughby 
Bare  them  right  doughtily, 

Ferrers  and  Fanhope." 


24    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


XVIII. 

Jean  Paul  found  that  he  had  done  all 
his  thinking  and  imagining  before  his 
eighteenth  year,  and  that  he  had  spent  his 
life  in  realizing  in  his  writings  and  in  his 
conduct  the  dreams  of  his  boyhood. 
Ruskin,  doubtless  like  other  men  of 
letters,  has  had  a  similar  experience. 
He  says  in  his  old  age,  "  I  find  in  myself 
nothing  whatsoever  changed.  Some  of 
me  is  dead,  more  of  me  is  stronger.  I 
have  learned  a  few  things,  forgotten 
many ;  in  the  total  of  me  I  am  but  the 
same  youth,  disappointed  and  rheumatic." 
That  the  holder  of  such  an  opinion 
should  preserve  his  juvenilia  from  seven 
years  onwards,  and  "  yielding  to  the 
request  of  his  friends"  should  permit 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    25 

their  publication,  although  not  exactly 
foregone  conclusions,  are  things  that  should 
surprise  no  one.  It  is  not,  perhaps, 
too  much  to  say  that  the  Ruskin  of 
"  Modern  Painters,"  "  The  Stones  of 
Venice,"  "  Fors  Clavigera,"  &c.,  is  to  be 
found  in  the  two  volumes  of  "  Poems  of 
John  Ruskin ; "  but  one  unacquainted 
with  that  later  Ruskin  could  not  possibly 
detect  in  them  the  art  critic,  political 
economist,  moral  censor,  and  latter-day 
prophet  whom  the  English  -  speaking 
world  knows,  admires,  and  disbelieves,  or 
disobeys.  And  this  remark  is  intended 
to  apply  to  the  earlier  poems  on  the 
typical  nature  of  which  Ruskin  himself 
lays  stress,  as  well  as  to  those  written 
after  he  had  attained  his  majority.  It  is 
beyond  expression  childish  to  ask  us  to 
recognize  in  this  couplet,  written  at  the 


26    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

age  of  eight,  the  political  economist  in 
embryo : — 

"  And  the  water  wheel  turns  slowly  round 
Grinding  the  corn  that  requires  to  be  ground  ;  " 

and  equally  absurd  to  point  to  the  follow- 
ing verses  from  the  same  piece  as  fore- 
telling "  Stones  of  Venice,"  and  "  Queen 
of  the  Air":— 

"  And  quarries  with  their  craggy  stones, 
And  the  wind  among  them  moans." 

To  a  mind  excessively  analogical  like 
Ruskin's,  any  one  thing  can  stand  for  any 
other  :  a  bee  may  appear  only  a  more 
highly  developed  bull's  foot.  It  would  be 
just  as  easy  to  detect  a  future  Ruskin  in 
the  juvenilia  of  Tennyson  or  Browning  as 
in  Ruskin's  own  early  verse.  No  man 
can  be  other  than  himself,  even  under 
conditions  the  most  adverse  to  his 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     27 

development.  But  the  fact  is,  that  in 
Ruskin's  poetry  there  is  much  less  of  him- 
self than  young  writers  of  capacity  usually 
contrive  to  put  into  their  early  work.  The 
great  prose  stylist,  as  he  himself  long  ago 
confessed,  made  a  false  start  when  he 
donned  the  Byronic  collar  and  set  off  to 
climb  Parnassus. 


28    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

XIX. 

Those  modern  troubadours,  those 
Parisian  Sordellos,  the  Felibres  and  Ciga- 
liers,  have  as  yet  only  attempted  to  resusci- 
tate the  Langue  d*Oc.  There  is  no  word 
of  the  re-establishment  of  Courts  of  Love, 
or  the  drawing  of  a  code  for  the  regulation 
of  affairs  of  the  heart — or  rather  of  the 
fancy.  Should  the  modern  professors  of 
the  Gay  Science  extend  their  revival  to 
the  reconstitution  of  the  whole  fantastic 
polity  of  the  Provencal  love-makers,  it  is 
to  be  hoped  that  the  head,  as  of  yore,  and 
not  the  heart,  will  be  the  source  of  the 
poetical  passion,  especially  when  it  is 
remembered  that,  according  to  the  old 
articles,  as  reported  by  Raynouard,  "true 
love  cannot  exist  between  husband  and 
wife,"  and  that  "  nothing  prevents  a 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     29 

woman  from  being  loved  by  two  men,  or 
a  man  from  being  loved  by  two  women." 
Probably  our  modern  troubadours  will 
remain  satisfied  with  the  composition  of 
poems  after  the  manner  of  Mistral  and 
Jasmin — chants,  chansons,  sons,  sonets, 
albas,  serenas,  and  planhs ;  and  with  their 
annual  August  escape  into  Provence  from 
the  exigencies  of  a  time  too  much  con- 
cerned about  ways  and  means,  social, 
political,  and  economic,  to  take  any  but 
the  most  transitory  interest  in  artificial 
revivals  of  long-forgotten  manners,  or  to 
listen  even  in  passing  to  the  "  stretched 
metre  of  an  antique  song." 


30    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

XX. 

Dignity  is  impudence. 

XXI. 

Those  who  are  convinced  of  the 
absolute  truth  of  Evolution  are  merely 
bigots,  as  intolerant  as  those  who  formerly 
believed  in  witchcraft  or  a  concrete  hell. 
No  mind  is  so  much  given  over  to 
delusions  as  the  logical  one. 

XXII; 

Logic  is  the  strong  delusion  which  God 
sends. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     31 


XXIII. 

The  French  christened  the  summer 
of  1891  "  F'et'e  des  toasts."  Fraternization 
in  every  language  and  every  latitude 
marked  it.  One  Frenchman  imagined 
himself  exclaiming  twenty  years  hence 
when  he  is  an  Academician,  "  Ah  !  mes 
enfants !  What  a  lovely  time  that  was  ! 
So  fertile  in  miracles  !  The  very  English 
were  polite ! "  The  French  still  believe 
what  Froissart  said  five  hundred  years  ago, 
that  the  "  English  are  the  most  outrage- 
ous people  in  the  world  ;  "  and  they  think 
it  specially  good  of  us  to  have  tamed  our 
native  savagery  on  the  occasion  of  their 
visit. 


32    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


XXIV. 

We  can  see  only  as  far  as  our  sight  will 
carry  ;  and  paltry  souls  detect  paltriness 
everywhere.  It  was  a  man  of  Gotham 
who  first  perceived,  after  staring  at  it  with 
his  naked  eyes  for  an  hour,  that  the  sun 
was  only  a  spot  with  some  splashes  of 
light  on  it. 


SENTENCES  AND   PARAGRAPHS.    33 

XXV. 

Here  follpw,  strung  together  for  the 
first  time,  such  of  the  chapbook  stories 
of  the  Wise  Men  of  Gotham  as  will  bear 
the  light : — 

Gotham  attained  its  notoriety  in  the 
reign  of  King  John.  That  misguided 
monarch,  being  on  a  journey  to  Notting- 
ham, desired  to  pass  through  Gotham, 
and  sent  word  of  his  intention.  The 
inhabitants,  already  apparently  in  an 
incipient  state  of  Gothamic  wisdom, 
assembled  to  consider  the  King's  message. 
One  of  the  townsmen,  a  more  fully 
developed  wiseacre  than  the  others, 
explained  to  his  fellows  that  the  ground 
over  which  the  King  passed  must  for  ever 
after  be  a  public  road,  and  advised  them, 
if  they  wished  to  avoid  that  calamity,  to 

D 


34    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

entreat  the  King  to  go  by  some  other  way, 
and  even  to  take  steps  to  prevent  his 
Majesty  from  passing  through  Gotham. 
An  indefinable  terror  took  possession 
of  the  people.  A  public  road  through 
their  town  !  It  was  not  to  be  thought  of. 
No  one  stopped  to  inquire  what  evils  were 
dreaded,  but  sent  incontinently  to  the 
King  praying  him  to  choose  another  road, 
and  plainly  stating  that  they  would  oppose 
his  passage  if  he  did  not.  There  can 
have  been  no  particular  advantage  in 
going  by  Gotham,  for  the  King  did  take 
another  way.  He  was,  however,  as 
became  a  King,  deeply  incensed  at  the 
proceedings  of  the  Gothamites,  and  sent 
to  inquire  of  them  the  reason  of  their 
incivility  and  ill-treatment,  with  the 
comforting  assurance  that  it  would 
need  to  be  a  very  good  reason  indeed 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     35 

if  they  wished  to  escape  punishment. 
The  people  of  Gotham,  hearing  of  the 
nature  of  the  royal  message  before  its 
arrival,  developed  all  of  them  into  wise- 
acres of  the  first  water,  and  hit  upon 
an  expedient  worthy  of  Ulysses.  When 
the  King's  messengers  came,  they  could 
find  no  one  whom  they  deemed  able  to 
give  an  answer  "  in  any  constant 
question,"  not  to  speak  of  such  a  delicate 
matter  as  a  reply  to  an  incensed  monarch. 
The  first  sign  of  the  strange  mental  con- 
dition of  the  Gothamites  that  the  King's 
messengers  met  was  a  cheese,  which  came 
rolling  down  the  hill  to  Nottingham.  A 
little  way  up  the  hill  they  saw  a  man 
standing  watching  the  cheese  with  a 
wallet  full  of  cheeses  on  his  back.  This 
man,  when  they  came  close  to  him,  took 
no  notice  of  them,  but  continued  watch- 

D    2 


36    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

ing  the  cheese ;  and  when  it  was  out  of 
sight,  "  So,"  said  he  to  himself,  "  what  a 
fool  I  am  to  sweat  under  this  burden !  " 
With  that  he  unstrapped  his  wallet,  and 
taking  out  cheese  by  cheese,  sent  them  all 
off,  charging  them  solemnly  to  meet  him 
in  Nottingham  market-place.  With  a 
light  heart  and  a  lighter  wallet  he  then 
sauntered  down  the  hill,  laughing  and 
saying  to  himself,  "Well,  I  never  knew 
cheeses  could  go  alone  before."  The 
messengers  looked  at  each  other  in 
amazement,  but  before  they  could 
exchange  a  word  they  heard  a  shouting, 
and  shortly  a  number  of  men  and  boys 
appeared  about  the  banks  of  a  stream  that 
ran  down  the  hill.  On  approaching  the 
crowd,  they  saw  several  men  dragging  an 
eel  up  and  down  the  water;  and  when 
they  asked  why  this  was  done,  they  were 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     37 

told  that  the  eel  was  to  b,e  drowned ; 
"  For  look  you,"  said  a  wise  man  of 
Gotham,  "  this  is  a  very  gluttonous  and 
irreligious  eel.  On  Lady-day  last  year 
we  stocked  a  pond  on  this  side  of  the 
town  with  red  herrings,  good  salt  fish, 
sprats,  and  smoked  haddocks,  that  they 
might  breed  against  next  Good  Friday ;  and 
when  we  went  to  the  pond  we  found 
nothing  but  this  great  swollen  eel. 
Does  it  not  deserve  drowning  ? "  The 
King's  messengers  answered  nothing,  but 
turned  with  increasing  amazement  to 
another  crowd,  which  had  almost  made  an 
end  of  planting  a  thorn  hedge  about  a 
bush.  "  Wherefore  do  ye  this,  honest 
neighbours  ? "  asked  the  messengers. 
"  Sirs,"  said  a  wise  man  of  Gotham, 
"  in  that  bush  there  is  a  cuckoo,  and 
because  we  want  it  to  remain  with  us  all 


38    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

the  year  round,  we  are  planting  a  hedge 
about  its  bush."  At  that  very  moment 
the  cuckoo  rose  into  the  air,  and  flew 
away  to  a  wood.  "  Vengeance  on  her  !  " 
said  the  men  of  Gotham,  "  we  made  not 
our  hedge  high  enough."  The  messen- 
gers turned  away  laughing,  and  soon  came 
to  the  top  of  the  hill,  where  they  found 
men  dragging  waggons  up  from  the  town, 
and  ranking  them  together  as  close  as 
they  might  be.  When  they  inquired  their 
purpose  in  doing  this,  the  men  of  Gotham 
informed  them  that  they  were  sheltering  a 
wood  from  the  sun.  After  that  the 
messengers  were  prepared  for  anything, 
and  no  new  wonder  that  they  saw  dis- 
turbed their  gravity  much,  except,  indeed, 
a  man  whom  they  met  in  the  gate  of  the 
town.  This  man  was  riding  a  worn-out 
horse  that  bore  also  a  sack  of  corn.  As 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     39 

he  passed  out,  a  sudden  thought  seemed 
to  strike  him,  for  he  lifted  the  sack  from 
the  horse's  shoulders  and  laid  it  on  his 
own,  saying,  "  A  merciful  man  is  merciful 
to  his  beast.  Now  thou  hast  only  thy 
master  to  carry."  The  messengers  then 
passed  through  the  town,  and  everybody 
they  saw  was  doing  something  absurd. 
On  the  other  side  of  Gotham  they  came 
upon  twelve  men  who  had  been  fishing  in 
the  stream.  In  their  eagerness  they  had 
all  waded  into  the  water,  and  on  returning 
to  land,  to  make  sure  that  none  of  them 
had  been  drowned,  they  fell  to  counting 
each  other.  The  whole  twelve  tried  it, 
but  the  counter  always  omitting  to 
reckon  himself,  they  could  only  make  out 
eleven.  One  of  the  messengers  said, 
"What  will  you  give  me  if  I  find  the 
twelfth  man  ? "  "  All  the  money  we 


40    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

have,"  answered  the  men  of  Gotham. 
The  messenger  had  of  course  no  need  to 
include'himself  to  make  out  the  twelve,  and 
the  men  of  Gotham  gave  him  their  money 
thankfully,  looking  on  him  as  a  kind  of 
magician.  Enough  had  been  seen  to  con- 
vince the  messengers  that  the  people  of 
Gotham  were  not  responsible  for  their 
actions,  so  they  returned  to  Nottingham. 
But  when  they  arrived  there  they  began  to 
wonder  if  they  had  not  been  bewitched, 
all  that  they  had  seen  being  so  strange  and 
unlikely.  Before  bearing  their  answer  to 
the  King,  they  went  into  an  ale-house 
in  the  market-place  to  think  it  over. 
There  they  found  the  first  Gothamite  they 
had  met,  the  man  of  the  cheeses,  bargain- 
ing for  a  horse.  "Well,  friend,"  said  one 
of  the  messengers,  "  did  your  cheeses  sell 
themselves  ?  "  "  That  I  do  not  know  yet," 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     41 

answered  the  man,  "  I  waited  all  day  in 
the  market-place  here,  and  when  the 
market  was  over,  and  my  cheeses  not  to 
hand,  I  consulted  with  my  father-in-law,  a 
good  man  of  Gotham.  He  very  wisely 
pointed  out  that  since  the  cheeses  were 
not  in  Nottingham,  they  must  have  rolled 
on  to  York,  and  I  am  cheapening  the  hire 
of  a  horse  to  follow."  This  was  sufficient 
for  the  messengers.  They  went  straight 
to  the  King,  who  was  much  amused  at 
their  story,  and  forgave  the  people  of 
Gotham. 


42     SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

XXVI. 

Fanny  Burney  is  one  of  the  best  exam- 
ples of  what  has  been  called  the  originality 
of  ignorance.  She  was  positively  illiterate. 
Even  Queen  Charlotte  found  it  impossi- 
ble to  talk  about  books  with  her.  Her 
ignorance  was  chiefly  attributable  to 
deficiency  in  imaginative  power.  Satisfac- 
tion in  life  consisted  for  her  in  having  her 
fancy  employed.  The  parties  in  her 
father's  house,  the  round  of  visits,  her 
husband's  gardening,  her  travels,  her  son's 
education,  her  adventures  in  Paris,  were 
sufficient  entertainment ;  and  when  there 
was  leisure  to  be  occupied,  or  money 
required,  she  copied  from  her  memory  in 
her  lively  way  characters  and  scenes 
which  she  had  observed.  Quick  observa- 
tion, quick  fancy,  were  her  chief  gifts.  A 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     43 

little  more  study  of  the  writings  of  others, 
a  few  more  ideas,  would  have  stifled  her 
genius.  Had  she  had  a  spark  of  imagina- 
tion with  her  limited  intellect,  she  would 
probably  have  been  unable  to  write  at  all ; 
but  the  absence  of  any  transcendental 
quality  made  her  fearless  and  successful 
in  paths  where  more  distinguished  abilities 
dared  not  tread.  The  want  of  imagina- 
tion which  made  her  practically  unaware 
of  her  ignorance  took  away  also  all  diffi- 
dence when  she  sat  down  to  her  desk. 
As  it  was,  an  extensive  acquaintance  with 
authors,  however  ignorant  she  was  of  their 
books,  while  it  could  not  destroy  her 
inoffensive  and  sometimes  delightful  self- 
confidence,  gradually  spoiled  the  ingenuous 
freshness  of  her  writing. 


44    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

XXVII. 

The  romantic  history  of  James  I.  of 
Scotland,  the  poet-king,  and  perhaps  the 
greatest  ruler  of  his  time>  has  attracted 
many  writers,  including  Tobias  Smollett. 
It  is  probably  news  to  many  that  the 
author  of  "  Roderick  Random  "  wrote  a 
blank-verse  tragedy.  He  called  it  The 
Regicide.  Its  history  has  a  peculiar 
interest.  In  attempting  to  bring  it  on  the 
stage  Smollett  suffered  endless  mortifica- 
tion, and  complained  that  he  was  "an 
egregious  dupe  to  the  insincerity  of  mana- 
gers." The  Regicide  was  written  at 
the  age  of  eighteen,  and  altered  over  and 
over  again  during  the  ten  years  it  went  in 
search  of  a  theatre.  Managers  and  patrons 
practised  on  Smollett  "  the  whole  art 
of  procrastination."  Now  his  play  is 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS-.     45 

"  retrieved  by  pure  accident  from  the  most 
dishonourable  room  in  his  lordship's 
house  ; "  now  "  a  gentleman  speaks  to  a 
nobleman,"  and  in  conformity  with  his 
remarks  the  plot  is  immediately  altered ; 
then  the  distracted  author  "  fails  to  acquire 
the  approbation  of  an  eminent  wit,"  by 
whose  advice  he  has  made  some  amend- 
ments ;  at  length  a  "  humane  lady  of 
quality "  sends  it  back  to  Drury  Lane, 
where  it  had  been  more  than  once  before ; 
but  Drury  Lane  is  incensed  at  the  ' c  up- 
braidings  of  a  gentleman,"  and  pronounces 
the  play  a  "  wretched  piece,  deficient  in 
language,  sentiment,  character,  and  plan." 
In  the  end  the  patroness  interferes,  and 
Smollett  is  promised  for  next  winter,  and 
offered  obligations  in  writing  which  he 
dispenses  with,  "lest  he  should  seem  to 
doubt  the  authority  of  her  ladyship." 


46    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

Next  winter,  of  course,  the  manager  had 
forgotten  all  about  him  and  his  play,  and 
so  in  high  dudgeon  Smollett  published  it. 
After  such  adventures  a  play  is  approached 
with  respect;  but  except  for  some  fiery 
passages,  Smollett's  Regicide  is  not  of 
much  account.  Smollett  was  constitu- 
tionally able  to  express  anger,  and  there 
are  indignant  explosions  in  almost  every 
scene,  often  very  forcible,  but  without  real 
feeling.  The  persistent  writing  of  irate 
lines  made  a  fire  in  the  author's  ears,  but 
his  heart  remained  untouched. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     47 


XXVIII. 

From  calamities  that  seem  to  flay  the 
very  soul  art  elaborates  sweetness  and 
delight.  They  say  the  finest  kid  is  made 
of  human  skin. 


XXIX. 

Except  to  the  poet,  the  age  of  poetry  is 
always  past. 


48    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


XXX. 

The  undeniable  truth  of  Claverhouse's 
remark  reminding  false  Whigs  that  "  there 
are  hills  beyond  Pentland,  and  lands 
beyond  Forth  "  has  sunk  very  deeply  into 
the  Scotch  mind.  The  untravelled  Scot 
is  apt  to  forget  the  existence  of  heather 
across  the  border,  and  has  been  known  to 
reject  with  scorn  the  suggestion  of  its 
growing  anywhere  at  all  on  the  other 
side  of  the  English  Channel.  It  is 
possible,  however,  that  no  Scotch  poet 
or  writer  has  loved  or  understood  the 
moor  any  better,  or  expressed  its  spirit 
more  fully,  than  an  English  poetess  and 
a  German  poet  have  done. 


SENTENCES  AND   PARAGRAPHS.     49 

XXXI. 

The  reticent  and  sadly  straitened 
genius  of  Emily  Bronte  found  wings  only 
on  the  Yorkshire  moors.  In  her  dusty 
laborious  life  as  a  teacher,  always  one 
vision  of  delight  appeared  to  her : — 

"A  little  and  a  lone  green  lane 

That  opened  on  a  common  wide ; 
A  distant,  dreamy,  dim,  blue  chain 

Of  mountains  circling  every  side. 
A  heaven  so  clear,  an  earth  so  calm, 

So  sweet,  so  soft,  so  hushed  an  air ; 
And  deepening  still  the  dreamlike  charm, 

Wild  moorsheep  feeding  everywhere." 

You  do  not  think  of  "  calm "  and 
"charm  "  as  a  blemish ;  there  is  a  sob  in 
the  singer's  voice,  and  it  is  in  the  magic 
mirror  of  a  tear-drop  that  she  sees  the 
"  moorsheep  feeding  everywhere."  Sir 
Walter  Scott  in  Italy  longed  for  a  glimpse 

E 


50    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

of  the  heather  before  he  died,  but  even 
his  homelier,  if  more  masculine,  emotion 
was  not  keener  than  this  : — 

"What  language  can  utter  the  feeling 

Which  rose  when  an  exile  afar, 
On  the  brow  of  a  lonely  hill  kneeling, 
I  saw  the  brown  heath  growing  there  ?  " 

The  plain,  the  halting  directness  that 
stumbles  rather  than  deviate  from  its 
meaning,  the  very  weakness  of  the  rhyme, 
"  the  brown  heath  growing  there"  is  proof 
of  an  emotion  like  that  which  the  pilgrim 
felt  on  the  sight  of  Jerusalem.  Once,  for 
a  moment,  in  her  "  Day-Dream,"  Emily 
Bronte  succeeds  in  singing  what  the  moor 
was  for  her : — 

' '  On  a  sunny  bank  alone  I  lay 

One  summer  afternoon  ; 
It  was  the  marriage  time  of  May 
With  her  young  lover,  June. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     51 

"  A  thousand  thousand  gleaming  fires 

Seemed  kindling  in  the  aitf  ; 
A  thousand  thousand  silvery  lyres 
Resounded  far  and  near. " 

To  her  sisters,  Charlotte  and  Anne,  the 
moor  meant  a  great  deal,  but  to  Emily  it 
was  the  one  temple  on  earth.  So  it  was 
with  Lenau.  The  opening  of  his  "  Tavern 
on  the  Heath  "  presents  the  best  idea  of 
a  Hungarian  moor,  and  of  the  poet's 
delight  in  its  wildness,  its  congenial 
melancholy,  and  its  expanse.  This  poem 
is  a  magnificent  ballad,  and  recalls  Liszt's 
Hungarian  rhapsodies.  The  following 
translation  of  the  opening  verses  does 
actually  succeed  here  and  there  in 
reproducing  the  surge  and  strength  of  the 
original,  but  the  translator  has  a  due  sense 
of  its  inadequacy  : — 

£  2 


52    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

"  I  wandered  through  wide  Hungary  : 

In  hamlet,  field,  or  arbour  ; 
There  was  no  happiness  for  me, 
For  daring  thoughts  no  harbour  ; 

"  Until,  the  last  bush  left  behind, 

I  reached  the  heath,  and,  bright'ning 
The  clouds  that  sailed  the  evening  wind, 
Outsprang  the  silent  lightning. 


' '  And  soon  the  darkening  distance  sent 

A  dull  sound  to  my  hearing  ; 

My  ear  upon  the  heath  I  bent ; 

It  seemed  like  riders  nearing. 

"And  fast  the  sound  speeds  o'er  the  land 

Earth's  stoutest  sinews  tremble, 

Like  one  who  fears  the  levin-brand 

When  thunder-clouds  assemble. 


' '  Onward  they  come,  a  herd  of  horse, 

The  herdsmen's  voices  clanging 
Like  flying  cranes,  o'er  grass  and  gorse, 
With  whips  like  hammers  banging. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     53 

"  The  stallion  lashes  up  the  ground 

With  hoofs  that  long  shall  last  him  ; 
The  scolding  wind  at  every  bound 
Like  waves  he  shoulders  past  him. 


"  They  fly  to  where  the  thunder-clouds 

Are  massed  in  dark  battalions  ; 
Then  suddenly  the  dark  night  shrouds 
The  riders  and  their  stallions. 


' '  But  still  I  thought  to  hear  again 

The  hoofs  like  thunder  clapping, 

To  see  the  coal-black  waving  mane, 

To  hear  the  long  whip  slapping. 


"  Straightway  the  clouds,  with  muffled  cries, 

With  black,  out-streaming  tresses 
And  thunder  hoofs,  rushed  up  the  skies, 
Heaven's  starry  wildernesses. 

"  The  storm  came  singing  high  and  strong, 

To  cheer  his  skyey  horses  ; 
He  swung  aloft  his  lightning  throng, 
And  kept  them  in  their  courses. 


54    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

"  And  when  they  reached  heaven's  western  banks. 

The  chargers  paused  together  ; 
The  sweat  dropped  from  their  smoking  flanks 
In  rain  upon  the  heather. 

"  The  twilight  came,  and  far  away 

Where  hillock  perched  in  hollow, 
A  wet  roof  caught  a  sloping  ray, 
And  beckoned  me  to  follow. 

"  The  wind  grew  soft,  the  storm  was  laid, 

And,  glad  it  had  departed, 
A  rainbow  sprang  across  and  made 
The  whole  heath  happy-hearted. " 


There  are  visions  more  tragic  on  the 
Hungarian  heath  than  a  troop  of  "land- 
loupers." In  "The  Three,"  Lenau  has 
expressed  with  great  power  the  horror  and 
anguish  of  defeat  in  battle ;  the  picture 
of  the  vanquished  and  dying  survivors  is 
perhaps  too  gory,  but  the  pathos  redeems 
it :— 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     55 

"  How  gently,  now  the  battle's  done, 
They  ride,  these  three  :  their  foes  have  won. 

From  deep  wounds  pours  the  bright  red  blood  ; 
The  chargers  feel  the  life-warm  flood. 

Their  bits  are  red,  but  not  with  rust  ; 
Blood  rinses  down  the  foam  and  dust. 

The  horses  gently  step  along, 

Or  else  the  blood  would  flow  too  strong. 

One  grips  the  other  ;  close  they  ride, 
Their  wounds  are  all  so  deep  and  wide. 

They  look  about  with  mournful  gaze, 
And  one  after  the  other  says — 

'  At  home  a  maiden  waits  ;  and  I, 
Her  darling,  am  distressed  to  die.' 

'  I  have  a  farm  where  green  woods  wave  ; 
Now  all  I  need  is  one  small  grave. ' 

'  The  flowery  earth,  the  heavens  bestarred, 
Was  all  I  had  ;  yet  death  is  hard. ' 


56    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

And  leering  at  the  death-ride  there, 
Three  vultures  circle  in  the  air. 

The  ghastly  riders  hear  them  hiss — 
'That  one  you  eat ;  you,  that ;  I,  this.'" 


A  short  poem  of  Lenau's,  "The  Sad 
Heavens,"  may  be  taken  as  a  background 
for  this  sombre  picture : — 

"A  tragic  thought  beclouds  the  face  of  heaven, 

O'erburdened  with  unutterable  woe  ; 
And  like  a  bed-rid  soul  with  anguish  riven, 
The  flowerless  heath-plant  tosses  to  and  fro. 

"The  broken-hearted  heavens  moaning,  call  not 
For  help  ;  dark  lashes  glisten  now  and  then  ; 
Like  human  eyes  filling  with  tears  that  fall  not, 
A  feeble  ray  breaks  through  the  hanging  rain. 

"The  cold  moor  shivers,  and  the  wind  is  sighing, 
And  from  the  heathland  shimmering  mists  rise 

up: 
The  melancholy  sky  is  slowly  dying — 

Lo,  from  its  hand  the  sun  drops  like  a  cup  !  " 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     57 

Lenau's  most    popular   song  is  "The 
Three  Gipsies." 

"  Gipsies  three  by  a  willow  I  found, 
Stretched  at  their  ease  together  ; 
Whilst  my  wain  with  a  screeching  sound 
Toiled  along  through  the  heather. 

' '  Sunset  bathed  with  its  golden  beams 

Out  of  its  golden  phial, 
One  who  drew  with  his  waking  dreams 
Fiery  notes  from  his  viol. 

"  One  his  pipe  in  a  lasting  kiss 

Held,  and  gazed  at  the  wreathing 
Smoke  that  curled  ;  and  was  sure  of  this — 
None  was  happier  breathing. 

"  One  as  calm  as  a  little  child 
Under  his  zither  sleeping, 
Heard  the  wind  in  its  strings  and  smiled  ; 
Love  had  his  heart  in  keeping. 

' '  Holes  and  rags  were  their  clothes,  I  say, 

Broidered  with  patches  uncivil  : 

There  defying  the  world  they  lay, 

Death,  and  fate,  and  the  devil. 


58    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

"  Care  comes  and  goes,  but  there  stays  our  pride  • 

Here  shall  dawn  a  bright  morn  yet ! — 
Fiddle  it,  dream  it,  smoke  it  aside  ; 
Learn  above  all  to  scorn  it. 

"  Wistfully,  as  I  crawled  along, 

I  watched  that  gipsy  trio  ; 
The  coal-black  hair,  and  the  fiery  song, 
And  the  umber  faces  .  .   .  Heigh-ho  !  " 


This  is  the  mood  of  "The  Jolly 
Beggars,"  dashed  with  Lenau's  melancholy. 
Burns  would  have  left  his  waggon  and 
joined  the  gipsies,  stealing  a  day  of  wild 
leisure  with  that  fond  gaillard  which,  for 
the  last  dozen  years  of  his  life,  kept  him 
from  dying  or  going  mad  ;  Lenau,  "  out 
of  his  weakness  and  his  melancholy," 
could  only  long  and  let  the  chance  of 
"  daffing  the  world  aside  "  pass  from  him 
with  a  sigh. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     59 

The  wide  moor  where  Lucy  Gray 
dwelt ;  the  moor  "  with  a  name 
of  its  own,"  on  which  Browning 
picked  up  the  eagle's  feather ;  the  moor 
crossed  by  the  highway,  where  Carlyle 
heard  the  frosty  silence  broken  one 
morning  by  a  regular  "  click-clack  like  a 
far-off  spondee  or  iambus,"  the  sound  of 
his  wife's  humble  friend,  old  Esther, 
crippling  along  to  Craigenputtock ;  the 
withered  heath  in  Tennyson's  "  Vision  of 
Sin  " ;  the  wild  tract  where  Keats  met  the 
"  knight-at-arms,  alone,  and  palely  loiter- 
ing," whose  ruin  had  been  wrought  by 
la  belle  dame  sans  merti ;  Coleridge's 
heath,  its  spring  with  soft  and  even  pulse 
sending  up  cold  waters  to  the  traveller, 
"  quietly  as  a  sleeping  infant's  breath  " ; 
the  heath  in  King  Lear ;  Scott's  many 
moors;  Hardy's  heath  haunted  by  the 


60    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

reddleman;  Exmoor,  sacred  to  Lorna 
Doone — are  all  thrice  welcome  to  the 
memory;  but  none  of  them  are  so 
heathery  of  the  heather  as  Emily  Bronte's 
and  Nicholas  Lenau's  Yorkshire  and 
Hungarian  moors. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    61 


XXXII. 

Our  matter-of-fact  literature  comes  from 
the  self-consciousness  of  our  time.  It  is 
a  self-consciousness  not  of  shame,  but  of 
curiosity:  shame-faced  self-consciousness 
makes  itself  an  apron  of  fig-leaves ;  the 
self-consciousness  of  curiosity  sits  down 
with  a  microscope. 


62    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


XXXIII. 

In  Booksellers'  Row,  Holborn,  the  east- 
end  of  Oxford  Street,  and  wherever  in 
London  the  trade  in  second-hand  books 
is  carried  on,  there  are  still  to  be  seen 
once  or  twice  in  the  week  melancholy 
figures  that  might  be  mistaken  for  old- 
clothes  men.  They  are  dressed  in  black 
broadcloth,  the  pile  of  which  has  long  been 
replaced  by  a  dull,  greasy  glaze ;  their  tall 
hats  are  too  large  for  them,  and  brown 
with  age ;  they  carry  black  sacks  just  as 
old-clothes  men  do.  In  a  sense  they  are 
old-clothes  men ;  they  are  the  last  of  the 
"  walking  booksellers,"  and  deal  in  the 
cast-off  garments  in  which  bookmen 
and  others  once  clad  their  minds.  They 
have  no  connection  with  the  book-hawkers 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     63 

who  travel  the  country  with  cheap  publica- 
tions ;  and  they  are  still  further  removed 
from  the  modern  book-canvasser.  The 
traffic  of  these  solemn  gentlemen,  as  befits 
their  sombre  appearance,  is  in  mouldy 
sheepskin,  vellum,  and  black-letter.  Into 
the  mysteries  of  their  trade  they  allow 
none  to  pry.  They  buy  at  sales  for  cus- 
tomers ;  they  pick  up  books  at  one  shop 
and  sell  them  at  another,  sometimes  with 
a  large  profit,  for  they  know  their  busi- 
ness; but  their  main  source  of  income, 
if  report  be  correct,  flows  from  the  vicissi- 
tudes of  the  learned.  Here,  however, 
inquiry  is  baffled,  and  it  is  said  that  even 
a  Special  Commission  would  fail  to  extract 
the  truth.  The  heyday  of  the  walking 
bookseller  was  over  by  the  beginning  of 
the  present  century.  There  were  never 
many  of  them,  and  in  a  few  years  the 


64    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

species  will  doubtless  be  extinct.  The 
most  notable  representative  of  the  class 
was  one  Henry  Lemoine,  and  it  may  be 
found  worth  while  to  glance  at  his  life,  a 
very  dim  page  in  literary  history,  long 
forgotten,  but  deserving  such  a  passing 
revival  as  this. 

Henry  Lemoine  was  born  at  Spital- 
fields  in  the  year  of  the  Lisbon  earth- 
quake. Of  his  parents  nothing  seems 
to  be  known.  At  fourteen  he  was 
apprenticed  to  a  man  who  combined 
the  trades  of  stationer  and  rag-merchant. 
The  hybrid  business  seems  to  have  been 
unsuccessful,  for  Lemoine's  master  found 
it  convenient  to  defraud  a  widow  of 
^3,000  and  then  emigrate.  During 
his  apprenticeship  to  the  stationer 
and  rag-merchant,  Lemoine  made  the 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     65 

acquaintance  of  a  Mr.  Toddy,  who  was  an 
"enormous  chronicle  of  events."  This 
man  directed  his  reading,  and  encouraged 
him  in  his  attempts  at  composition, 
counteracting  the  evil  influence  of  the  rag- 
merchant,  who  hated  learning,  and  had 
persecuted  Lemoine  in  his  studies  so 
persistently  that  he  could  read  only  after 
his  master  had  retired  for  the  night.  It 
was  in  these  untoward  circumstances  that 
Lemoine  began  to  write  for  the  magazines, 
obtaining  a  certain  degree  of  success  at 
once.  His  first  employer  having 
absconded,  Lemoine  joined  himself  to  a 
Mr.  Chatterton,  who  was  quite  a  charac- 
ter in  his  way.  He  also  carried  on  two 
trades  in  one  shop — those  of  baker  and 
bookseller,  having  inscribed  over  his 
window  this  distich  borrowed  from 
Roberts,  a  wine  and  book  merchant  in 

F 


66     SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

the    Borough,    substituting    "bread"   for 
"  wine  " : — 

' '  Two  trades  united  which  you  seldom  find, 
Bread  to  refresh  the  body,  books  the  mind." 

With  Chatterton  Lemoine  learned  to 
bake,  and  was  besides  allowed  time  to 
read  and  write.  He  acquired  a  reputa- 
tion for  powers  of  ridicule  and  satire  with 
the  habitues  of  the  Three  Tun  Tavern 
and  the  Three  Morris  Dancers  in  the  old 
'Change,  resorts  of  actors.  "  The  Sting- 
ing Nettle,"  a  satire,  the  asperity  of  which 
was  held  to  atone  in  a  measure  for  the 
faulty  form,  and  the  "  Reward  of  Merit," 
reckoned  by  his  friends  to  be  in  Church- 
hill's  best  manner,  were  Lemoine's  chief 
productions  at  this  period.  After  serving 
his  time  with  Mr.  Chatterton,  he  hired 
himself  as  a  foreigner  to  teach  French  in 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     67 

a  boarding-school  at  Vauxhall.  He  was 
supposed  not  to  know  a  word  of  English, 
and  the  imposition  succeeded  admirably, 
until,  finding  the  restraint  intolerable,  he 
took  one  of  the  domestics  into  his  con- 
fidence in  order  to  be  able  to  converse  in 
English.  His  secret  soon  reached  the 
ears  of  his  employers,  Mannypenny  &  Co., 
and  he  was  dismissed,  but  with  a  good 
character,  and  a  testimony  to  his  thorough 
efficiency  as  a  teacher  of  French.  He 
then  in  1777  took  a  bookstall  in  the 
Little  Minories,  from  which  he  removed 
in  1780  to  Bishopsgate  Churchyard.  The 
day  he  spent  in  philosophical  conversation 
with  people  of  note  who  frequented  his 
stall ;  in  the  evening,  unable  to  shake  off 
the  habits  contracted  in  the  company 
of  the  actors  during  his  apprenticeship, 
he  frequented  the  taverns,  invariably, 

F  2 


68    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

however,  choosing  companions  higher  in 
the  social  scale  than  himself.  His  want 
of  thrift  finally  obliged  him  to  turn  his 
trade  of  baker  to  account.  Still  retaining 
his  stall,  he  hired  himself  to  a  baker's 
widow,  for  whom  he  worked  on  Sundays, 
taking  also  a  share  of  the  regular  night- 
work,  in  return  for  board  and  lodging. 

During  the  latter  period  of  his  life 
Lemoine  was  very  industrious,  but  the 
failure  of  a  printer  who  owed  him  ^"129 
reduced  him  to  the  necessity  of  becoming 
a  pedestrian  bookseller,  which  occupation 
he  followed  from  1795  till  his  death  in 
1814.  With  his  long  drooping  nose, 
black  sack,  and  slouching  gait,  he  was 
often  derided  as  a  Jew  old-clothes  man. 
He  bore  all  such  taunts  patiently,  or  some- 
times he  would  silence  his  tormentors  with 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     69 

the  reminder  that  the  Son  of  Man  had  been 
a  Jew.  In  1797  he  issued  his  "History 
of  the  Art  of  Printing,"  which  contained 
a  chronological  list  of  the  printers  of 
England,  Scotland,  and  Ireland,  an 
account  of  Walpole's  press  at  Strawberry 
Hill,  and  an  essay  on  literary  property, 
compiled  from  Blackstone. 

Lemoine,  besides  possessing  fair  literary 
capacity,  was  one  of  the  best  judges 
of  an  old  book  in  England,  a  good 
French  and  German  scholar,  and,  it  is 
said,  an  able  commentator  on  Jewish 
writings.  Had  he  only  possessed  a  little 
more  self-control  and  habits  of  thrift  he 
might  have  anticipated  the  success  of  the 
Chamberses  in  Edinburgh,  or  of  Charles 
Knight  in  London.  As  it  was,  he  never 
had  more  than  his  chin  above  the  waves  ; 


70    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

but  he  never  gave  in,  and  it  is  well  to 
know  of  men  who  kept  fronting  misfortune, 
and  who  died  in  harness  because  the 
time  had  not  yet  come  to  put  it  off. 

It  would  be  impossible  to  compile  a 
list  of  Lemoine's  works.  He  translated 
Lavater's  "  Physiognomy."  He  collabor- 
ated on  a  book  of  domestic  medicine. 
He  wrote  three  novels,  and  conducted 
successively  three  magazines,  to  which  he 
was  the  largest  contributor.  He  studied 
in  the  street,  and  produced  his  copy  in 
public-houses.  His  periodicals,  The 
Conjurors  Magazine,  The  Wonderful 
Magazine,  and  The  Eccentric  Magazine, 
are  a  cross  between  The  Gentleman's 
Magazine  and  the  chapbooks  of  the  time, 
inheriting  more  from  the  latter. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     71 


XXXIV. 

"  If  the  party  struck  turns  the  other 
cheek  always  smite  again,"  said  Worldly 
Wiseman  to  his  son. 


XXXV. 

Angels'   visits,  however  infrequent,  are 
not  as  a  rule  ceremonious. 


XXXVI. 

If  one  has  a  healthy  mind  it  is  whole- 
some to  go  from  extreme  to  extreme,  just 
as  a  hardy  Russian  plunges  out  of  a  boiling 
bath  into  the  snow. 


72     SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

XXXVII. 

No  German  writer  is  less  German  than 
Nietsche.  His  style  is  that  of  a  French 
man  :  he  has  a  profound  horror  of  disser- 
tation. All  his  writings  are  collections  of 
aphorisms ;  and  all  ideas  disgust  him  when 
he  has  considered  them  for  a  short  time. 
His  writing  is  a  succession  of  imagery  of 
the  most  concrete  order,  but  always  with 
a  symbolic  value.  There  is  no  trace  of 
sentiment — everywhere  a  morbid  sense  of 
reality,  incapable  of  satisfying  itself  with 
any  thought  of  man's  heart.  His  irony  is 
altogether  different  from  the  ordinary 
German  humour — dry,  bitter,  cruel,  and 
as  perfectly  under  control  as  that  of  Swift. 
He  would  be  satisfied  could  he  find  one 
certainty.  He  has  compared  himself  to 
Diogenes,  who  went  in  broad  day  with  a 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     73 

lantern  seeking  a  man.  "  My  misfortune," 
said  he,  "is  that  I  cannot  even  find  a 
lantern."  He  is  the  Nihilist  of  philo- 
sophy. 


74    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


XXXVIII. 

"  In  the  beginning  was  nonsense,  and 
the  nonsense  came  from  God,  and  the 
nonsense  was  God."  That  is  Nietsche's 
theory  of  the  universe.  All  is  illusion — 
metaphysic,  science,  religion,  art.  Here 
follow  some  of  his  sayings. 


XXXIX. 

There  is  nothing  left  for  metaphysic  to 
do  but  to  define  things  as  they  are ;  and 
when  that  is  achieved  it  will  be  nothing : 
it  is  not  the  world  in  itself,  but  the  world 
as  it  appears  that  interests  us. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     75 


XL. 

It  is  of  as  little  consequence  to  know 
things  as  they  are,  as  it  is  for  the  drowning 
sailor  to  know  the  chemical  composition 
of  sea-water. 


XLI. 

Metaphysic  is  a  necessary  inevitable 
illusion — the  flattering  unction  the  young 
man  lays  to  his  soul  that  not  he  but 
the  nature  of  things  is  responsible. 


76    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


XLII. 

Conscience  is  a  pretext  which  we  have 
invented  to  save  us  the  trouble  of  think- 
ing. 


XLIIL 

Compassion  is  the  most  banal  of  all 
feelings  :  when  a  man  is  prosperous  and 
eupeptic,  compassion  is  a  natural  sentiment 
with  him  ;  but  don't  be  ill  too  often  or  too 
long,  or  you  will  be  thought  to  deserve  all 
your  troubles. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     77 


XLIV. 

Gratitude  is  a  subtle  form  of  revenge  : 
the  receiver  of  a  benefit  recovers  his 
superiority  in  the  effort  to  be  grateful. 


XLV. 

It  is  pretended  that  self-denial  is  the 
sign  of  a  moral  action;  but  there  is  no 
action  which  is  not  a  sacrifice — the 
sacrifice  of  that  which  pleases  less  for  that 
which  pleases  more :  selfishness  is  the 
sole  law  of  human  nature. 


78    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


XLVI. 

Vanity  is  the  supreme  form  of  selfish- 
ness :  it  is  the  skin  of  the  soul,  and  serves 
to  hide  the  wretchedness  within. 


XLVII. 

Distinguished  actions  may  be  attributed 
to  vanity,  ordinary  actions  to  habit,  and 
insignificant  actions  to  fear. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     79 


XLVIII. 

Friendship  is  possible  only   when  the 
individuals  are  far  apart 


XLIX. 

Sexual  love  is  a  mixture  of  sensuality, 
pity,  and  humiliation — humiliation  being 
a  desire  to  be  exalted. 


8o    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


Woman  has  always  managed  to  make 
man  provide  for  her;  her  consolidated 
fund  is  man's  vanity :  under  the  pretext  of 
giving  him  the  upper  hand,  she  has  left 
him  all  the  anxiety  and  responsibility. 


LI. 

The  only  question  which  one  ought  to 
put  to  oneself  before  marriage  is  :  Do  you 
think  you  will  always  be  able  to  keep  up 
a  conversation  with  your  wife  ?  For  all 
the  rest  passes,  and  when  it  is  past  it  is 
still  necessary  to  have  something  to  talk 
about. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     81 


LII. 

There  are  two  kinds  of  art :  that  which 
accentuates  the  sentiment  of  existence, 
and  that  which  makes  us  forget  it. 


LIIL 

The  worship  of  genius  comes  from  the 
vanity  of  men,  who  attribute  to  super- 
natural power  what  they  know  themselves 
unable  to  do :  we  make  a  god  of  a  man  of 
parts  to  safeguard  our  amour  propre. 


82    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

LIV. 

Nietsche's  is  the  most  unphilosophic 
mind  that  ever  attempted  philosophy.  He 
is  a  great  poet  seeking  a  system,  instead  of 
taking  things  on  trust.  He  starts  from 
nothing,  and  ends  in  nothing.  He 
proves  and  disproves,  believes  and  dis- 
believes everything;  and  he  is  as  un- 
certain of  the  Nihilism  to  which  he  always 
harks  back  as  he  is  of  witchcraft. 

LV. 

Nietsche  always  regarded  his  Nihilism 
as  a  preface  to  a  positive  doctrine.  But 
he  failed  to  unlearn  the  habit  of  doubt, 
until  he  went  mad,  and  discovered  that 
"  indubitably  it  was  he  who  had  created 
the  world." 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     83 


LVI. 

It  cannot  be  said  too  often  that  there  is 
no  greater  illusion  than  disillusion. 


LVII. 

To  be  a  Nihilist  in  philosophy  is  to 
substitute  the  illusion  of  blindness  for  our 
own  trustworthy  vision.  Goethe  went 
through  it  and  came  out  serene,  with  the 
serenity  of  faith  in  art,  in  science,  and  in 
man.  Shakespeare  did  not  turn  mad 
after  Hamlet  and  King  Lear,  but  lived 
to  write  The  Tempest. 


G   2 


84    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LVIII. 

Goethe  felt  and  suffered  as  much  as 
Nietsche,  but  being  stronger,  saw  through 
the  Brocken  spectre  of  self  which  inter- 
rupted Nietsche's  view  wherever  he 
turned. 


LIX. 

It  has  been  said,  "  only  that  is  true  of 
which  the  converse  is  also  true " ;  but 
truth  is  liker  a  diamond  than  a  proposi- 
tion :  a  brilliant,  every  facet  and  edge  of 
which  lightens  with  veracity. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     85 

LX. 

There  are  doubtless  many  ways  of  see- 
ing London,  but  for  the  Londoner  or  the 
visitor  who  has  some  time  at  his  disposal, 
perhaps  the  best  method  is  the  least 
methodical.  Want  of  method,  when 
rightly  considered,  is  really  a  kind  of 
faculty,  and  not  the  absence  of  one.  It  is 
a  gift,  and,  like  other  gifts,  the  possession 
of  it  entails  an  onerous  burden  of  responsi- 
bility. When  once  an  individual  perceives 
clearly  that  he  has  a  talent  for  doing 
things  the  wrong  way,  a  bias  towards  pro- 
crastination, a  power  of  putting  the  cart 
before  the  horse  with  infallible  exactitude, 
and  an  irresistible  tendency  towards  the 
employment  in  speech  and  writing  of  that 
figure  which  grammarians  call  hysteron- 
proteron,  he  is  impressed  with  as  deep  a 


86    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

sense  of  what  he  owes  the  world  and  him- 
self, as  if  he  had  been  dowered  with  one 
of  the  more  generally  recognized  forms  of 
genius.  In  addition  to  this  heavy  respon- 
sibility, he  has  the  harassing  consciousness 
that  he  is  the  most  immoderately  handi- 
capped man  in  the  world,  and  can  only 
arrive  at  the  starting-place  long  after 
most  of  his  competitors  have  reached  the 
goal.  But  this  faculty,  which  in  the  long 
run  cannot  fail  to  be  disastrous  for  its  pos- 
sessor, has  its  pleasures  and  its  compensa- 
tions. Out  of  the  very  impediments  and 
delays  in  his  path  the  unmethodical  man 
can  derive  satisfaction.  For  example,  he 
does  not  get  up  to  London  till  he  is  about 
forty,  to  begin  the  race  with  men  only 
half  his  age  ;  a  very  difficult  thing  to  find 
compensation  for,  one  might  think.  On 
the  contrary,  a  walk  about  the  streets  on  a 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     87 

spring  or  a  summer  afternoon  consoles  him 
for  his  late  beginning.  He  knew  London 
before  he  came  to  it.  He  had  studied  its 
antiquities,  and  he  had  an  intimate 
acquaintance  with  its  literary  associations. 
There  are  countless  episodes  in  his  walks 
which  such  a  man  will  remember  to  his 
dying  day.  To  wander  aimlessly  along 
Gray's  Inn  Road,  and  suddenly  find  him- 
self for  the  first  time  in  front  of  the  old 
wooden  houses  in  Holborn  that  form  the 
entrance  to  the  Staple  Inn,  is  a  pleasure 
to  the  man  of  no  method,  equal,  at  least, 
to  that  of  the  astronomer  "when  some  new 
planet  swims  into  his  ken  "  ;  and  pleasures 
of  that  kind  are  easily  attainable  in  great 
variety  in  London  still,  for  it  will  be  a 
long  time  before  they  can  improve  away 
all  the  old  landmarks.  The  unmethodical 
method  of  seeing  London  is  doubtless  the 


88    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

best ;  but  then  it  requires  the  unmethodi- 
cal man,  and  he  is  rare — the  true  un- 
methodical man,  who  does  not,  like  the 
spurious  species  commoner  than  black- 
berries, spend  his  days  and  nights  in  the 
invention  of  countless  methods  for  econo- 
mising time  and  labour.  The  true 
unmethodical  man  would  not  have  a 
method  if  he  could ;  he  would  go  out  of 
his  way — if  one  whose  vocation  it  is  to 
deviate  can  ever  be  said  to  go  out  of 
his  way — to  avoid  the  temptation  of  pick- 
ing up  the  most  golden  method  which 
could  be  thrown  in  his  path. 

LXI. 

"  Futile "  was  Carlyle's  pet  word. 
Whenever  he  felt  himself  genuinely 
interested  in  anybody  or  anything  he 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     89 

seems  always  to  have  paused  and  asked 
himself,  "  How  does  it  become  me,  with 
difficulty  balancing  myself  here  on  the 
tight-rope  between  the  two  eternities,  to 
exhibit  the  least  concern  save  in  this  tight- 
rope and  in  myself,  the  unfortunate  spiritual 
Blondin  ?  "  This  in  any  personal  matter 
he  committed  to  writing  is  almost  his 
invariable  attitude,  except  where  his  family 
is  concerned.  His  "  Excursion  (futile 
enough)  to  Paris  "  is  incomparably  naive 
in  its  attempts  to  throw  himself  off  the 
scent.  It  is  quite  evident  that  he  was 
pleased  at  the  Theatre  Frangais.  The 
audience,  with  Changarnier  for  figure- 
head, the  actors  who  are  twice  pronounced 
"  good,"  the  two  pieces — he  waited  to  the 
farce,  he  was  so  interested — all  entertained 
him,  but  it  mustn't  be  confessed  even  to 
himself:  "to  me,  a  very  wearisome 


90    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

affair."  Then  when  he  finds  himself  so 
delighted  with  a  neat  saying  of  Royer 
Callard's  that  he  is  forced  to  quote  it,  he 
perceives  that  as  this  is  mere  gossip  he 
ought  to  be  ashamed,  so  he  exclaims — the 
pretence  is  here  much  too  thin — "  Heigho, 
that  was  Prosper  Me'rime'e's  account  after- 
wards, heigho  ! "  But  it  must  be  remem- 
bered that  this  is  no  mere  posing  as  a 
great  weary  Gulliver  among  the  Lilli- 
putians. It  is  the  high  and  dry  hypocrisy, 
the  inverted  politeness  of  the  lowland 
Scot,  who  greets  his  only  son  after  a  long 
absence  with  the  laconic,  "  Ay,  Jamie." 
One  reason  of  the  immense  bulk  of  Carlyle's 
writings  possibly  lies  here.  His  Scotch 
reticence  prevented  him  from  declaring 
the  heart  of  his  message,  but  he  wanted  to, 
and  kept  on  trying  :  he  never  wrote  his 
"  Exodus  from  Houndsditch." 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS,     91 

Carlyle's  egotism  was  as  unconscious  and 
sublime  as  a  child's.  "  I  am  told  that  he 
(Thiers)  is  jealous  that  I  respect  him 
insufficiently.  Poor  little  soul,  I  have  no 
pique  at  him  whatsoever,  &c."  The 
greatest  Englishman  of  letters  of  this 
century  found  it  indispensable  for  his  con- 
tentment to  belittle  almost  every  man  of 
real  importance  whom  he  met. 


92    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

LXII. 

Several  passages  in  "Wotton  Rein- 
fred  "  are  almost  identical  verbally  with 
passages  in  "Sartor  Resartus."  It  may 
be  going  too  far  to  say  that  "Wotton 
Reinfred"  was  contained  in  one  of  the 
mythical  paper  bags,  "  carefully  sealed 
and  marked  successively  in  gilt  China-ink 
with  the  symbols  of  the  six  southern 
Zodiacal  signs  beginning  at  Libra,"  which 
the  Hofrath  Henschrecke  sent  to  the 
English  editor  of  the  "Clothes  Phil- 
osophy "  in  place  of  an  autobiography  of 
Teufelsdrockh ;  nevertheless,  the  resem- 
blances are  so  marked  that  one  is  forced 
to  the  conclusion  that  Carlyle  had  actually 
the  manuscript  of  "  Wotton  Reinfred " 
before  him  while  writing  certain  chapters 
of  "Sartor."  The  description  of  the 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     93 

House  in  the  Wold  and  of  the  view  from 
the  garden-house  in  the  former  are  the 
same  as  descriptions  of  the  Waldschloss 
and  its  environment  in  the  chapter  entitled 
"Romance"  in  the  latter;  and  the 
incident  of  the  hero  silencing  the  tea- 
table  orator  and  the  circumstances  of  the 
love-story  are  essentially  identical  in  both. 
Sometimes  the  wording  is  the  same. 
"  Disbelieving  all  things,  the  poor  youth 
never  learned  to  believe  in  himself,"  occurs 
in  both.  The  following  are  parallel 
passages  : — 

"Withdrawn  in  "Thus  in  timid 
proud  humility  within  pride  he  withdrew 
his  own  fastnesses ;  within  his  own  fast- 
solitary  from  men,  yet  nesses,  where,  baited 
baited  by  night-spectres  by  a  thousand  dark 
enough,  he  saw  himself  spectres,  he  saw  him- 
with  a  sad  indignation,  self  constrained  to 
constrained  to  renounce  renounce  in  unspeak- 
the  fairest  hopes  of  able  sadness  the  fairest 


94    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

existence.      And  now,  hopes     of     existence. 

O,  now  !      '  She  looks  And   how  sweet,   how 

on    thee, '    cried     he :  ravishing    the    contra- 

'  she,        the        fairest,  diction.         '  She     has 

noblest,'"&c.  ("Sartor  looked  on  thee  !' cried 

Resartus,"     book     ii.,  he;  'she,   the  fairest, 

ch.  v.)  noblest,'  "  &c.  ("Wot- 
ton  Reinfred,"  ch.  ii.) 

The  stiff  academic  writing  m  "  Wotton 
Reinfred,"  excellent  in  its  kind,  is  in 
extraordinary  contrast  with  the  style  Car- 
lyle  was  about  to  develop ;  but  here  and 
there  are  passages  unsurpassed,  even  by 
Carlyle  himself.  Take  the  following  de- 
scription of  a  portrait  of  Cromwell : — 

"  Old  Noll,  as  he  looked  and  lived  ! 
The  armed  genius  of  Puritanism  ;  dark  in 
his  inward  light ;  negligent,  awkward  in 
his  strength,  meanly  apparelled  in  his  pride, 
base-born,  and  yet  kingly.  Those  bushy 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     95 

grizzled  locks  falling  over  his  shoulders; 
that  high,  careworn  brow ;  the  gleam  of 
those  eyes,  cold  and  stern  as  the  sheen  of 
a  winter  moon;  that  rude,  rough-hewn, 
battered  face,  so  furrowed  over  with  mad, 
inexplicable  traces,  the  very  wart  on  the 
cheek,  are  full  of  meaning.  This  is  the 
man  whose  words  no  one  could  interpret, 
but  whose  thoughts  are  clearest  wisdom, 
who  spoke  in  laborious  folly,  in  voluntary 
or  involuntary  enigmas,  but  saw  and  acted 
unerringly  as  fate.  Confusion,  ineptitude, 
dishonesty,  are  pictured  on  his  countenance, 
but  through  these  shines  a  fiery  strength, 
nay,  a  grandeur,  as  of  a  true  hero.  You 
see  that  he  was  fearless,  resolute  as  a 
Scanderberg,  yet  cunning  and  double 
withal,  like  some  paltry  pettifogger.  He 
is  your  true  enthusiastic  hypocrite ;  at  once 
crackbrained  and  inspired,  a  knave  and  a 


96    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

demigod ;  in  brief,  Old  Noll,  as  he  looked 
and  lived ! " 

Only  he  who  was  to  substitute  a  higher 
idea  of  Cromwell  could  have  stated  so 
powerfully  the  highest  then  existing. 


SENTENCES  AND   PARAGRAPHS.     97 


LXIII. 

The  "  New  Journalism "  is  the  defiant 
reply  of  the  "  thirty  millions  mostly  fools  " 
to  Carlyle's  doctrine  of  silence. 


LXIV. 

The  world  on  the  whole  and  in  the 
mass  is  neither  very  strong-minded  nor 
very  hard-hearted,  and  it  gradually  modi- 
fies the  ideas  of  its  great  men  to  its  own 
likeness ;  anthropomorphism  is  as  active 
in  biography  and  history  as  it  is  in 
theology. 


98    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXV. 

Unfailingly,  when  the  critic's  capacity 
to  be  charmed  begins  to  wane,  he  declares 
that  it  is  the  charmer  who  had  deceived 
him,  and  with  a  solemn  shake  of  the 
head  advises  all  and  sundry  "  in  the 
interests  of  true  literature  "  not  to  "  honour 
fraudulent  draughts  upon  our  imagina- 
tion." It  is  always  these  second  thoughts 
that  destroy  the  value  of  criticism.  If  on 
attempting  a  second  perusal  one  finds  a 
book  that  has  once  pleased  beginning  to 
pall,  the  wisest  course  is  to  cease  reading, 
and  treasure  the  first  impression  ;  we  may 
be  sure  ninety-nine  times  out  of  a 
hundred  that  the  book  is  as  fresh  as  ever 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.     99 

it  was,  and  that  it  is  we  who  are  growing 
old. 

"  Right  in  thy  teeth,  or  in  thy  toothless  chaps, 
I  swear,  antiquity,  first  thoughts  are  best." 

This  is  only  one  side  of  the  truth,  but  it 
is  a  side  people  are  too  easily  persuaded 
to  turn  from. 


H  2 


ioo   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXVI. 

This  is  the  age  of  essences.  The  cattle 
upon  a  thousand  hills  are  boiled  down  and 
handed  about  in  little  earthenware  pots ; 
Bovril  takes  the  place  of  roast-beef,  and 
tit-bits  that  of  literature.  If  the  Muses 
are  analogical,  and  recognize  the  operation 
of  the  Zeitgeist  in.  the  wide-spread  advertise- 
ment of,  if  not  indulgence  in,  beef-extract, 
they  may  be  expected  henceforth  to  con- 
centrate their  energy  on  couplets  and 
quatrains.  The  voluminousness  which 
has  characterised  the  poetry  of  the 
Victorian  period  is  perhaps  about  to  end. 
The  long  luxurious  idylls,  the  long  discur- 
sive dramatic  monologues,  the  long 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    101 

garrulous  story  of  eld,  and  the  long 
rhapsodies  where  thought  and  emotion  are 
lost  in  a  revel  of  colour  and  sound,  are 
probably  about  to  give  place  to  a  shorter 
flight  and  a  compacter  form. 


102    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

LXVII. 

Attempts  at  blank  verse  in  French  are 
few  and  far  between.  Count  Bruguiere 
de  Sorsum  in  the  early  part  of  the  present 
century  translated  a  number  of  Shake- 
speare's plays,  rendering  rhyme  by  rhyme, 
blank  verse  by  blank  verse,  and  prose  by 
prose  with  astonishing  results.  For 
example,  "  Come,  let  me  clutch  thee  !  "  a 
sentence  from  Macbeth's  address  to  the 
air-drawn  dagger,  is  expanded  into 
"  Instrument  dangereux,  laisse-moi  te 
saisir ! "  Bruguiere  was  better  advised 
when  he  translated  Southey's  "  Don 
Roderick"  into  prose,  a  task  which  he 
undertook  because  he  was  inclined  to 
regard  Southey  as  the  greatest  poet  of  hia' 
age.  "  The  changes  that  fleeting  time 
procureth." 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    103 


LXVIII. 

There  was  once  a  rumour  of  a  Meredith 
Society.  George  Meredith  will  surely  be 
spared  this  infliction  in  his  lifetime  at 
least.  But  if  a  Meredith  Society  must  be 
formed,  how  would  the  following  general 
rules  work?  (i)  That  the  members 
admire  George  Meredith  in  silence.  (2) 
That  members  shall  write  as  much  as  they 
like  about  George  Meredith,  and  burn 
their  writings  without  showing  them  to  ' 
any  one.  (3)  That  no  publicity  shall 
be  given  in  any  shape  to  the  existence  of 
the  Society.  (4)  That  the  Society  shall 
endeavour  not  to  exist  as  soon  as  it  can. 


104    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXIX. 

The  chief  hindrances  in  the  considera- 
tion of  any  matter  are  the  thoughts  of 
others.  It  is  not  so  much  a  test  of 
genius  to  think  originally  as  to  know  what 
one  actually  does  think.  Some  men 
upon  most  subjects  have  two  judgments  : 
a  public  one  for  daily  use,  and  a  private 
one  which  they  deceive  themselves  into 
the  belief  they  never  held.  There  are 
decent,  honest  men  who  opine  the 
opinions  of  others,  persuaded  that  they 
are  their  own ;  few  indeed  can  detach 
their  proper  thought  from  the  mass  of 
ideas. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    105 

LXX. 

The  discipline  of  social  life  is  in  nothing 
more  beneficial  than  in  its  inculcation  of 
a  healthy  silence.  The  first  requisite  to  a 
proper  carriage  in  almost  any  social  circle 
is  the  ability  to  maintain  silence  concern- 
ing that,  above  all  things,  with  which  one 
is  best  acquainted — until  we  arrive  at 
Society  proper,  where  there  is  a  rigid 
elimination  of  all  "  shop."  It  is  this  that 
tempts  the  wealthy  soap-boiler  or  stationer 
to  commit  suicide  as  a  tradesman,  no 
matter  how  high  his  rank  in  his  own  class, 
and  to  undergo  long  years  of  purgatorial 
pain,  if  haply,  bald-headed,  wrinkled,  with 
heart  all  gone  to  vellum,  and  brains  a 
mere  handful  of  borilla  ash,  he  may  at 
last  enter  that  earthly  paradise  where  all  is 
forgiven  and  forgotten,  and  silence  upon 
disagreeable  subjects  is  the  order  of  the 


io6    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

day ;  where  an  absolute  embargo  is  laid  on 
every  "  shop,"  except  indeed  on  that 
"shop"  which  Society  prescribes.  That 
all-engrossing  subject,  the  "  shop "  of 
Society,  is  Society  itself.  Does  not 
Society  say,  "  I'll  have  no  individual 
egotism,  no  variety.  You  must  all  talk 
about  me ;  become  mouth-pieces  of  me ; 
my  happy  or  scandalous  doings  or  sayings 
— these  are  to  be  your  staple,  and  from 
these  you  must  weave  daily  and  nightly 
a  rainbow-web  of  talk  "  ?  And  is  it  not  a 
good  rule  which  proscribes  all  "  shop " 
save  the  one  ?  In  obeying  it  we  make  the 
nearest  approach  to  silence  which  human 
frailty  may  attain ;  and  silence,  we 
ought  by  this  time  to  realise,  is  the  most 
precious  of  metals.  Who  dare  blame  us 
if,  to  make  it  current,  we  temper  it  with 
a  little  silvern  alloy — of  speech,  to  wit  ? 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    107 


LXXI. 

Truly  this  talking  of  one  "  shop  "  is  a 
capital  discipline.  The  mere  crocheteer 
has  to  conceal  his  penny  trumpet ;  the 
hobby-rider  must  leave  his  rocking-horse 
at  home;  the  man  with  a  grievance 
requires  to  bandage  up  the  political  wen 
or  the  social  cancer  which  he  carries  about 
vicariously ;  the  student  of  science, 
tracking  with  the  ardour  and  perseverance 
of  a  beagle  some  undaunted  or  unearthed 
form  of  death,  finds  the  callousness  of 
society  to  his  worthy  aim  as  refreshing  as 
a  dip  in  the  sea,  as  great  an  impetus  to 
centrality  as  the  fear  of  starvation ;  the 
poet,  whose  boiling  brain  has  exhaled  in 
some  new  and  most  difficult  verse-form 
the  freshest  expression  of  the  highest 


io8   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

thought,  has  the  wholesome  knowledge 
impressed  on  him  that,  however  great  a 
poet  he  may  be,  Society  is  neither  a  lunatic 
nor  a  lover ;  and,  finding  himself  de  trap, 
he  takes  his  fine  frenzy  back  to  his  study, 
and  there  lays  on  that  homely  word  which 
illuminates  his  poem  and  gives  it  life  for 
ever.  The  parvenu  is  taught  that  he  must 
not  speak  of  his  over-decorated  house ;  the 
clergyman  daren't  preach,  nor  the  lawyer 
lay  down  the  law.  And  yet — and  yet, 
there  is  no  talk  worth  the  expense  of 
breath,  and  no  talk  worth  listening  to, 
save  the  arrantest  "  shop."  Diderot  over 
his  wine,  Johnson  with  tea-cup  in  hand, 
Carlyle  smoking  his  Virginia,  all  talked 
"  shop "  of  the  most  glaring  kind ;  and 
who  would  not  give  a  season's  dissipation, 
once  to  see  Diderot  dash  his  night-cap 
against  the  wall,  to  hear  Johnson  at  his 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    109 

fifteenth  cup  defend  the  Church  of 
England,  or  watch  the  smile  growing  in 
Carlyle's  eyes  as  he  ended  a  chapter  from 
the  unwritten  "  Exodus  from  Hounds- 
ditch  "  with  a  laugh  like  the  neighing  of 
all  Tattersall's,  tears  streaming  down  his 
cheek,  pipe  held  aloft,  foot  clutched  in  the 
air — loud,  long-continuing,  uncontrollable; 
a  laugh  not  of  the  face  and  diaphragm 
only,  but  of  the  whole  man  from  head  to 
heel? 


i io    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXXII. 

Thomas  Hey  wood  in  his  curious  "  Life 
of  Merlin,"  concerned  as  to  whether 
the  magician  had  been  a  heathen,  does 
not  overcome  the  difficulty  with  the  ease 
of  William  Rowley,  who  says  plainly  that 
his  father  was  the  devil.  He  rather 
arrives  at  the  conclusion  that  he  was  a 
step-brother  of  Plato's.  A  recent  writer 
has  solved  the  matter,  and  reconciled 
opposites,  by  making  him  an  evangelical 
Christian,  with  command  over  the  Platonic 
elemental  spirits;  from  which  it  may  be 
inferred  that  if  Merlin  must  have  had 
Apollo  for  father,  his  mother,  in  all 
likelihood,  would  be  an  erring  damsel  of 
Britain.  It  is,  perhaps,  remarkable  that 
the  story  of  Merlin  has  produced  such  a 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS,    ill 

small  quantity  of  literature.  If  we  except 
the  voluminous  prophecies  in  his  name  by 
Partridge,  Sidrophel  Lilly,  and  others,  the 
appearances  of  Merlin  in  English  litera- 
ture are  confined  to  two  or  three  romances, 
ballads,  and  plays  until  we  come  to  Scott's 
"  Bridal  of  Triermain "  and  Tennyson's 
"Vivien."  The  very  name,  Merlin,  is 
fascinating;  his  story  is  most  romantic, 
and  possesses  strong  human  interest ;  yet 
it  was  left  for  Tennyson  to  discover  its 
value.  For  centuries  it  lay  in  the  quarry 
like  a  block  of  marble,  hieroglyphs 
scrawled  all  over  it  by  almanack  makers, 
bits  of  it  chipped  off  and  carried  away  for 
doorsteps  and  pedestals,  until  the  eye  that 
could  see  beheld  the  immortal  group  in 
the  forest  of  Broceliaunde,  and  liberated  it 
from  the  tomb,  where,  like  the  enchanter 
himself,  spell-bound  it  had  slept  for 


112    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

centuries.  That  Tennyson  has  told  the 
story  finally  it  would  be  unwise  to  assert. 
There  is  as  yet  no  outstanding  female 
embodiment  of  the  "spirit  that  denies," 
and  in  Vivien  is  a  possible  she-Mephis- 
topheles. 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    113 


LXXIII. 

If  not  the  greatest  critic  of  his  time, 
Hazlitt  is  one  of  the  greatest ;  and  his 
greatness  consists  in  this — that  he  had 
"  the  courage  to  say  as  an  author  what  he 
felt  as  a  man."  With  Coleridge  and 
Lamb  he  introduced  the  new  method. 
Literary  criticism  had  been  a  scratching  of 
the  surface.  They  turned  up  the  soil  and 
showed  the  fresh  earth  ;  and  Hazlitt  was 
not  the  least  lusty  husbandman  of  the 
three.  Yet  his  fame  is  dim  compared 
with  that  of  the  others.  His  gift  was 
single,  and  his  glory  is  single,  though  its 
lustre  be  dull.  Misrepresentation  of  the 
man's  life,  like  a  corroding  vapour,  has 
tarnished  the  aureoie.  He  was  "paid 
with  contempt  while  living,"  and,  if  not 

i 


114   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

"  with  an  epitaph,"  then  with  pity,  "  when 
dead."  Even  Lamb,  who  lived  one  of  the 
happiest  lives  of  this  century,  has  been 
pitied ;  and  while  it  is  to  be  resented,  it 
cannot  be  wondered  at  that  the  melan- 
choly Hazlitt  should  be  commiserated,  for 
vanity  feeds  on  the  degradation  of  others. 
With  the  exception  of  his  father  and  his 
son,  his  relations  were  not  sources  of 
satisfaction  to  him  ;  his  wives  were  any- 
thing but  helpmeets ;  he  was  often  in 
economical  straits ;  his  health  was  bad  : 
the  whole  outward  circumstances  of  his 
life  were  dingy;  but  not  more  so  than 
those  of  many  a  hermit  who  in  rags  and 
nameless  discomfort  communed  with 
heaven  night  and  day.  There  has  been 
no  pleasure  in  contemplating  Hazlitt 
because  he  has  been  considered  such  a 
miserable  fellow.  Pity  is  akin  to  love, 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS,    115 

but  it  is  also  akin  to  despite ;  and  it  is 
common  to  hate  the  wretchedness  that 
offends.  When  the  great  satisfaction  that 
Hazlitt  took  in  living  is  clearly  understood, 
his  fame  will  grow  brighter.  His  last 
words  were,  "Well,  I've  had  a  happy 
life  " ;  and,  since  no  man  is  a  critic  on 
his  deathbed,  it  may  be  taken  for  an  un- 
premeditated, impulsive  cry  as  his  years 
flashed  past  him,  each  laden  with  profound 
meditation  on  subjects  of  his  own  choos- 
ing. 


I    2 


Ii6    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXXIV. 

It  is  the  age  of  publicity  ;  the  extension 
of  the  franchise  has  made  the  people  king, 
and  everybody  from  Prime  Minister  to 
Jack  Pudding  appeals  to  Caesar ;  some 
with  reason,  many  simply  because  it  is  the 
fashion.  Indeed,  one  is  sometimes 
inclined  to  regard  the  habit  of  forestalling 
death  with  autobiographies,  memoirs, 
reminiscences,  interviews,  as  a  species  of 
panic.  "As  the  world  grows  fuller," 
people  seem  to  say,  "  the  chance  of  our 
being  remembered  decreases.  Our  jour- 
nals, our  note-books,  they  will  burn  them 
or  let  the  rats  eat  them  when  we  are  dead. 
Nobody  will  know  the  things  we  said,  and 
the  things  that  were  said  of  us ;  the  lofty 
contempt  we  had  for  So-and-So,  who 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    117 

thought  himself  such  a  big  man,  and  the 
high  regard  in  which  that  other  truly  great 
personality  held  us.  Unless  we  make  a 
stir  now  we  shall  be  forgotten.  Let  us  get 
reporters  to  put  paragraphs  about  us  in 
the  newspapers ;  invite  interviewers  to 
interview  us ;  bring  out  our  journals  our- 
selves ;  let  us  publish,  publish,  publish ! 
for  the  night  cometh  when  no  man  can 
publish.  Let  us  appeal  to  the  great  public 
at  once ;  posterity  will  know  nothing  of  us 
unless  we  start  an  echo  now."  One 
would  think  that  a  belief  in  any  immor- 
tality except  that  of  a  page  in  the  "  Dic- 
tionary of  National  Biography  "  had  died 
out  in  England  altogether. 


Ii8   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

LXXV. 

A  certain  barrister  of  some  note,  who 
makes  about  a  thousand  a  year  by  his 
novels  and  stories  in  addition  to  his  pro- 
fessional earnings,  is  said  to  have  filled  up 
his  income-tax  schedule  as  follows : 
Profession,  Law — so  much  ;  Trade, 
Literature — so  much.  True  or  not,  we 
are  here  face  to  face  with  one  fact  which 
has  been  recognized  ever  since  the  open- 
ing of  Grub  Street,  and  with  another  not 
perhaps  so  generally  known.  That  litera- 
ture, or  rather  writing,  for  nearly  two 
hundred  years  now,  has  been  followed  as 
a  trade  by  hosts  of  needy  or  prosperous 
scholars  and  others,  all  the  world  knows. 
Does  it  know  also  that  those  who  take 
cheerfully  to  writing  as  a  trade,  and  nothing 
else,  are  often  the  very  men  who,  from 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS,    lig 

their  circumstances,  might  be  expected  to 
produce  literature  ?  The  ever-increasing 
numbers,  ambitious  of  literary  distinction, 
who  flock  to  London  yearly,  to  become 
hacks  and  journalists,  regard  the  work 
by  which  they  gain  a  livelihood  as  a  mere 
industry,  a  stepping-stone  to  higher  things 
— alas !  a  stepping-stone  on  which  the 
great  majority  of  them  have  to  maintain  a 
precarious  footing  all  their  lives.  But 
they  do  not  choose  the  inferior  work  that 
pays  :  they  offer,  or  think  they  offer,  the 
public,  through  the  publishers,  bread  ;  but 
the  public — still  the  thought  of  the  hack — 
wants  stones,  and  these  they  are  forced 
sorrowfully  to  supply.  What  wonder  if 
they  sometimes  take  to  laying  about  them 
with  scorpions  !  And  what  wonder  if  they 
often  accept  their  fate  and  become  fat  and 
flourishing  ! 


120   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXXVI. 

It  may  be  said  broadly  that  there  are 
three  kinds  of  poets — employing  the  word 
as  inclusive  of  all  verse-writers  :  those  who 
turn  out  garments,  those  who  put  some 
kind  of  body  into  the  stuff  they  shape,  and 
those  who  inform  their  work  with  a  soul. 
As  a  rule  it  will  be  found  that  diction  and 
passion,  the  garment  and  the  body,  are 
most  delicately  wrought,  and,  in  the  old- 
time  phrase,  most  loftily  built,  when  the 
essence  of  the  poetry  is  spiritual,  when  it 
has  a  soul.  Few  poets  consciously 
endeavour  to  make  only  garments ;  but  it 
is  the  misfortune  of  many  that  they  are 
unable  to  carry  their  creative  labours 
further.  There  is  no  necessity,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  why  those  poets  who, 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    121 

doing  their  best,  succeed  in  making  only 
the  trappings  of  poetry,  should  be 
anathematised,  except,  perhaps,  when  the 
trappings  are  badly  made — and  that  is 
what  too  often  happens  if  there  be  no 
measurement  to  work  to,  no  body  to  fit. 
Even  then,  however,  it  is  wise  and 
humane  not  to  invoke  the  thunder. 
Torture  always  undid  its  purpose  ;  let  the 
critic  be  merciful. 


122    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXXVII 

It  is  not  so  very  long  ago  yet,  although 
we  have  entered  the  last  decade  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  since  the  phrase  fin  de 
stick  wakened  up  one  morning  and  found 
itself  famous.  Immediately,  it  took  itself 
for  granted.  It  rides  triumphant  on  the 
pen  of  every  ready-writer ;  tyrannises  over 
weak  imaginations ;  and  already,  by  sheer 
dint  of  its  endeavour  to  be  more  than  a 
phrase,  has  grown  into  something  very  like 
a  fact.  For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that 
the  primal  cause  of  its  quasi-existence  is  a 
chronological  one  :  we  are  at  the  end  of 
the  nineteenth  century ;  therefore  the 
ideals  of  the  nineteenth  century  have  run 
to  seed.  This  chronological  method  of 
marking  off  the  ages  of  the  world's  history 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    123 

is  not  more  arbitrary  than  it  is  absurd.  A 
simple  reference  to  a  book  of  dates  will 
show  that  for  the  last  thousand  years  the 
final  year  of  each  century  has  occurred 
nearer  the  middle  than  the  end  of  a 
well-defined  period.  Attempts  have 
been  made  towards  the  close  of  most 
centuries  to  persuade  the  world  that  it  was 
in  a  parlous  state,  and  many  people  doubt- 
less were  persuaded.  At  the  present  time, 
when  the  means  of  publicity  are  at  the 
commandment  of  any  one  who  can  write 
a  letter  to  the  newspapers,  the  detractors 
of  this  age  have  it  in  their  power  to  create 
a  panic  in  the  thought,  if  not  in  the 
conduct,  of  the  world ;  and  some  of  them 
are  busy  at  it.  Probably  there  are  no 
more  well-meaning  people  in  the  world 
than  lackeys.  For  them  heroes  have  no 
existence;  they  detect  the  warts  and 


124  SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

blemishes  in  the  paragons,  and  are  not 
slow  to  point  them  out.  If  they  do  not 
expose  the  weaknesses  of  the  great,  how 
is  that  necessary  function  to  be  performed? 
On  the  whole,  it  is,  doubtless,  right  that 
the  ages  should  have  their  lackeys  to  be- 
little them,  as  well  as  their  poets  to  praise 
them ;  and  if  the  world  still  prefers  the 
word  of  the  former,  why  then  the  world  is 
consistent ! 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    125 


LXXVIII. 

In  America  this  detraction  of  the  times 
is  loudest ;  for  a  little  word  whispered  in 
an  inner  room  of  London  or  Paris  is  soon 
echoed  back  from  the  house-tops  of  Boston 
and  Phila4elphia.  What  is  a  complaint 
here  becomes  a  boast  there ;  and  The 
Arena  flaunts  as  its  motto  the  grievous  cry 
of  Heine,  "  We  do  not  take  possession  of 
our  ideas,  but  are  possessed  by  them." 
An  anonymous  writer,  so  possessed,  will 
write  you  a  paper  entitled,  "Would  We 
Live  Our  Lives  Over  Again  ?  "  going  one 
better,  as  he  himself  might  say,  than  Mr. 
Mallock's  "  Is  Life  Worth  Living?  "  No 
reflective  sober-minded  man  would  live  his 
life  over  again,  if  he  had  the  opportunity, 
when  it  came  to  the  pinch  ;  when  he  saw 


126   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

it  stretched  out  before  him,  complete  and 
distinct.  Unless  drunkards — in  American, 
"  men  of  bibulous  habits " — forgot  the 
horrors  of  a  debauch,  they  would  be 
deterred  from  another.  Unless  army 
officers  forgot,  after  a  series  of  campaigns, 
their  privations,  anxieties,  and  wounds, 
they  would  resign  their  commissions. 
Unless  merchants  engaged  in  "mighty 
enterprises  "  —  American  for  making 
"  corners  " — forgot  the  terrible  tension  of 
nerve  and  brain  they  had  often  been  sub- 
jected to,  they  would  retire  from  business 
in  middle  life.  Our  illusions  vanish  at 
sixty,  if  not  before,  and  then  the  thought 
of  living  "the  weary  uncrowned  years  over 
again  is  chilling,  forbidding."  There  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  happy  life  in  any  true 
sense — "  veritable  sense  of  the  adjective  " 
in  American;  perhaps  some  happy  hours, 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    127 

some  happy  days ;  but  even  these  are  sure 
to  be  commingled  with  fragments  of  un- 
happiness.  Happy  lives  !  The  phrase  is 
itself  a  self-evident  absurdity.  The  most 
satisfied  and  the  most  unsatisfied  agree 
in  the  main  in  their  estimate  of  life. 
Byron  had  experienced  only  two  happy 
days  ;  and  Goethe,  who  lived — "postponed 
his  funeral "  in  American — more  than 
twice  as  long  as  Byron,  experienced  but 
eleven  days'  happiness ;  so  that  between  an 
unfortunate  and  an  abnormally  fortunate 
man  the  difference  in  happiness  is  only  nine 
days.  Life  may  be  an  obligation ;  it  is 
neither  a  delight  nor  an  advantage.  Would 
we  live  it  over  again — not  another  life,  but 
this  very  life  which  we  have  lived  ?  Will, 
and  strength,  and  philosophy  we  can 
command  for  one  journey  from  crib  to 
grave ;  but  that  is  quite  enough.  Repeti- 


128   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

tion  would  be  onerous  and  execrable,  and 
none  but  a  dolt  would  choose  it.  Such  is 
the  corporate  American  answer  to  the 
question,  "  Would  We  Live  Our  Lives 
Over  Again  ?  " 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    129 


LXXIX. 

Here  follow  a  few  individual  answers, 
apparently  by  Englishmen. 

"  I  am  sixty-two,"  says  one  man,  "  and 
would  be  very  glad  indeed  to  live  my  life 
over  again.  I  shall  live  again  after  death 
of  course,  and  be  conscious  of  my 
existence ;  therefore  I  know  that  it 
would  be  a  great  waste  of  time  on  my 
part  to  repeat  these  sixty-two  years 
exactly  as  I  have  lived  them  in  this 
world,  when  I  might  be  spending  them  in 
a  better  world  under  new  conditions. 
But  one  does  get  attached  to  a  place; 
besides,  I  think  I  would  like  to  woo  my 
wife  again,  to  marry,  and  to  see  my  boys 
and  girls  growing  up  about  me.  On  the 
other  hand,  my  wife  died  after  being  bed- 

K 


130    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 

rid  for  two  years ;  my  eldest  boy  made 
sad  mistakes  in  life ;  and  two  of  my 
daughters  are  very  unhappy  in  their 
marriages.  If  it  weren't  for  the  misery  it 
would  entail  on  these,  I  believe  I  would 
like  to  live  my  life  over  again,  exactly  as 
it  has  been." 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    131 

LXXX. 

"  So  would  I,"  says  another.  "  I'm 
seventy.  I  was  flogged  at  school  nearly 
every  day,  for  I  was  always  in  mischief, 
and  a  dunce  besides.  I  fell  in  love 
like  a  booby  with  a  girl  much  too  good 
for  me,  and  when  she  wouldn't  have  me 
I  began  to  go  the  pace ;  and  I've  been 
going  the  pace  ever  since.  I've  got  all 
kinds  of  aches  and  pains ;  and  I'm 
blotched  and  bloated,  and  most  people 
turn  away  their  eyes  from  me ;  but  I'm 
in  love  with  life.  When  I  die  I  know 
it's  all  up.  If  there  were  a  choice 
between  another  life  and  this  one  over 
again,  I  would  have  a  try  at  the  new  one, 
of  course,  for  I've  been  horribly  miserable 
all  my  days.  But  it's  not.  It's  this  life 
over  again,  just  as  it  was,  or  annihilation. 
By  Jove,  I  wish  I  had  the  choice  !  " 

K  2 


132    SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXXXI. 

"  I  also  am  seventy,"  says  a  third,  "  and 
I've  had  so  much  satisfaction  in  life  that 
if  I  had  the  offer,  I  believe  I  would  live  it 
over  again.  Happiness  ?  Well,  no ;  I 
don't  believe  I  was  ever  happy.  I  don't 
believe  anybody  was  ever  happy.  That's 
my  great  cure  for  the  world — to  get  people 
to  see  that  they  never  can  be  happy,  but 
that  they  can  have  satisfaction.  I  think 
one  of  the  best  answers  to  this  stupid 
Yankee  question  was  given  before  it  was 
put ;  and  that's  Tennyson's  '  Northern 
Farmer.'  That  fine  old  pagan  was  busy  all 
his  life — too  busy  to  be  happy ;  but  the 
satisfaction  he  had  in  making  bad  land 
good  land  ! — Why,  it's  evident  he  would 
have  liked  nothing  better  than  to  live  his 


SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS.    133 

life  a  hundred  times  over  again,  with  a 
hundred  Thurnaby  waastes  to  stub.  Poor 
starving  people  who  have  had  little  to  do 
all  their  lives,  and  rich  people  who  have 
had  less,  and  some  poets,  artists,  and 
perhaps  the  whole  of  Boston — which,  if  it 
isn't  the  hub  of  the  universe,  is  certainly 
a  diseased  nervous  centre — might  say, 
'No,  we  can't  face  our  lives  a  second 
time ' ;  but  all  people  who  have  ever  done 
any  work  in  the  world  worth  doing  would 
only  be  too  glad  to  do  it  over  again." 


134   SENTENCES  AND  PARAGRAPHS. 


LXXXII. 

Here  we  have  an  orthodox  man,  a 
reprobate,  and  one  who  seems  not  much 
of  anything,  all  agreeing  that  life  is  not 
synonymous  with  torture,  and  that  the 
present  age,  although  the  Jeameses  and  the 
Morgans  may  find  it  as  ill-natured  and 
unheroic  as  old  Major  Pendennis  appeared 
to  them,  is  quite  a  tractable  and  good- 
humoured  age  to  the  Laura  Bells,  the 
Captain  Costigans,  and  the  George 
Warringtons. 


THE    END. 


Henderson  S*  Scalding  (Ltd.),  3  &•  5,  Matylebone  Lane,  I 


LIBRARY  FACILITY 


